Periods  of  European  literature 

EDITED   BY 

PROFESSOR  SAINTSBURY 


VI. 


THE   LATEK   KENAISSANCE 


PERIODS   OF   EUROPEAN   LITERATURE, 

Edited  by  Professor  SAINTSBURY. 


"The  criticism  ivhich  alone  can  much,  help  us  for  the  future 
is  a  criticism  which  regards  Europe  as  being,  for  intellectual 
and  spiritual  purposes,  one  great  confederation,  bound  to  a  joint 
action  and  working  to  a  common  result." 

—Matthew  Arnold. 


In  12  Crown  8vo  Volumes. 


I. 

The 

II. 

The 

III. 

The 

IV. 

The 

V. 

The 

VI. 

The 

VII. 

The 

inn. 

The 

IX. 

The 

X. 

The 

XI. 

The 

XII. 

The 

DARK  AGES       

FLOURISHING     OF      ROMANCE 
AND  THE   RISE   OF  ALLEGORY  . 
FOURTEENTH  CENTURY      . 
TRANSITION  PERIOD     . 
EARLIER   RENAISSANCE       . 
LATER  RENAISSANCE    . 
FIRST  HALF  of  17th  CENTURY  . 
AUGUSTAN  AGES    .... 
MID-EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY      . 
ROMANTIC  REVOLT 
ROMANTIC   TRIUMPH    . 
LATER  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


Professor  W.  P.  Ker. 

The  Editor. 

F.  J.  Snell. 

G.  Gregory  Smith. 
The  Editor. 
David  Hannay. 

Professor  H.  J.  C.  Grierson. 

Oliver  Elton. 

J.  Hepburn  Millar. 

Professor  C.  E.  Vaughan. 

T.  S.  Omond. 

The  Editor. 


CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS,  New  York. 


THE 


LATER    RENAISSANCE 


BY 


DAVID  JHANNAY 


NEW     YORK 
CHAELES     SCRIBNER'S     SONS 

153-157   FIFTH    AVENUE 

1898 


All  Rights  reserved 


PAJ 


P  K  E  F  A  C  E. 


The  general  rules  by  which  this  series  is  governed 
have  been  fully  stated  by  the  Editor  in  the  first  pub- 
lished volume,  The  Flourishing  of  Romance  and  the 
Rise  of  Allegory.  It  will  therefore  not  be  necessary 
for  me  to  do  more  than  endeavour  to  justify  the 
particular  application  of  them  in  this  book.  Mr 
Saintsbury  has  fully  recognised  the  magnitude  of 
the  task  which  has  to  be  overcome  by  the  writer 
who  should  undertake  to  display  "  intimate  and  equal 
knowledge  of  all  the  branches  of  European  Literature 
at  any  given  time."  Nobody  could  be  more  conscious 
of  his  insufficiency  to  attain  to  any  such  standard  of 
knowledge  than  I  have  had  occasion  to  become  in  the 
course  of  executing  the  part  of  the  plan  intrusted 
to  me.  Though  I  hope  my  work  has  not  been 
shirked,  I  still  cannot  venture  to  boast  of  "intimate 
and  equal  knowledge  "  of  all  the  great  bulk  of  litera- 


5*nfi£^o 


VI  PREFACE. 

ture  produced  during  the  later  sixteenth  century. 
Happily  so  much  as  this  is  not  required.  Some 
ignorance  of — or  at  least  some  want  of  familiarity 
with — the  less  important,  is  permitted  where  the 
writer  is  "  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  literature 
which  happened  to  be  of  greatest  prominence  in  the 
special  period."  I  must  leave  others  to  decide  how  far 
my  handling  of  the  Spanish,  English,  and  French 
portions  of  the  subject  can  be  held  to  excuse  my  less 
intimate  familiarity  with  the  Italian  and  Portuguese. 
The  all  but  unbroken  silence  of  Germany  during  this 
period  made  it  unnecessary  to  take  account  of  it. 
Modern  Dutch  and  modern  Scandinavian  literature 
had  hardly  begun ;  such  Scottish  poets  as  Scott  and 
Montgomerie  are  older  than  their  age.  These  and 
other  things,  on  the  principles  of  the  series,  fall  into 
the  previous  or  the  next  volume. 

Although  the  reasons  for  the  course  taken  with  the 
literature  of  Spain  are  given  in  the  text,  they  may  be 
repeated  here  by  way  of  preliminary  excuse.  It  has 
been  decided  to  treat  the  Spaniards  as  an  example  of 
the  overlapping  necessary  to  the  satisfactory  carrying 
out  of  a  series  in  periods.  I  have  begun  with  them 
earlier  than  with  others,  have  ended  with  them 
later,  and  have  as  far  as  space  permitted  treated  them 
as  a  whole.  For  this  there  is  what  appears  to 
me  to  be  a  sound  critical  reason.  Although  Spain 
undoubtedly  belongs  to  Europe,  yet  there  is  in  her 
something    which     is    not     quite     European.       The 


PREFACE.  Vll 

Spaniards,  though  they  have  always  been,  and  are, 
vigorous  and  interesting,  have  a  certain  similarity  to 
some  oriental  races.  This  is  not  the  place  for  an 
essay  on  the  Spanish  national  character.  The  com- 
parison is  only  mentioned  as  a  justification  for 
pointing  out  that,  like  some  oriental  races,  the 
Spaniards  have  had  one  great  period  of  energy. 
At  no  time  have  they  been  weak,  and  to-day  they 
can  still  show  a  power  of  resistance  and  a  tenacity 
of  will  which  promise  that  if  ever  the  intellect  of  the 
nation  revives,  they  will  again  play  a  great  part  in  the 
world.  But  it  is  none  the  less  a  matter  of  fact  that, 
except  during  their  one  flowering  time,  they  have  not 
been  what  can  be  called  great.  From  the  fifteenth 
century  till  well  into  the  seventeenth,  those  defects 
in  the  national  character,  which  have  kept  the 
Spaniards  stationary  and  rather  anarchical,  were  in 
abeyance.  The  qualities  of  the  race  were  seen  at 
work  on  a  vast  stage,  doing  wonderful  things  in  war, 
colonisation,  art,  and  letters.  Yet  the  very  reason 
that  the  Spaniard  was  then  exercising  his  faculties  to 
the  full  extent  to  which  they  would  go,  gives  a  com- 
plete unity  to  his  Golden  Age.  It  cannot  be  divided 
in  any  other  than  a  purely  arbitrary  way.  England 
and  France  were  destined  to  grow  and  develop  after 
the  Later  Eenaissance.  Tasso  and  Bruno  were  the 
last  voices  of  a  great  Italian  time.  But  Spain  sus- 
pended the  anarchy  of  her  middle  ages  at  the  end 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  gathered  force,  burst   upon 


viii  PREFACE. 

the  world  with  the  violence  of  a  Turkish  invasion,  flour- 
ished for  a  space,  and  then  sank  exhausted  at  the  end 
of  a  hundred  and  fifty  years. 

It  may  be  thought  that  too  little  attention  has  been 
paid  to  the  Portuguese.  I  will  not  venture  to  assert 
that  the  criticism  is  ill  founded.  Still  I  shall  plead  by 
way  of  excuse  that  what  the  lesser  Peninsular  nation 
did  in  literature  was  hardly  sufficiently  original  to 
deserve  fuller  notice  in  a  general  survey  of  a  very 
fertile  period.  Sa  de  Miranda  and  his  contemporaries, 
even  Camoens  and  his  follower  Corte-Eeal,  were  after 
all  little  more  than  adapters  of  Italian  forms.  They 
were  doing  in  kindred  language  what  was  also  being 
done  by  the  Spanish  "  learned  poets."  In  Camoens 
there  was  no  doubt  a  decided  superiority  of  accom- 
plishment, but  the  others  seem  to  me  to  have  been 
inferior  to  Garcilaso,  Luis  de  Leon,  or  Hernan  de 
Herrera.  And  this  "  learned  poetry  "  is  in  itself  the 
least  valuable  part  of  the  literature  of  the  Peninsula. 
In  what  is  original  and  important,  the  share  of  the 
Portuguese  is  dubious  or  null.  They  have  a  doubtful 
right  to  the  Zibros  de  Caballerias.  They  have  a  very 
insignificant  share  in  the  stage,  and  no  part  in  the 
Novelas  de  Picaros.  Barros  and  the  other  historians 
were  men  of  the  same  class  as  the  Spaniards  Oviedo 
or  Gornara.  For  these  reasons,  I  have  thought  it 
consistent  with  the  scheme  of  the  book  to  treat  them 
as  very  subordinate. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   I. 

THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN   SPAIN. 

The  unity  of  Spanish  literature — Limits  of  treatment — A  prevailing 
characteristic — The  division  into  native  and  imitative — The 
inheritance  from  the  fifteenth  century— Spanish  verse — The 
Cancioneros — The  romances — The  Romanceros — The  quality 
of  this  poetry — Spain  and  Italy — The  Di&logo  de  la  Lengua 
— Prose  of  the  early  sixteenth  century — The  influence  of  the 
Inquisition  ....... 


CHAPTER,   II. 

THE   SPANISH   LEARNED   POETS. 

The  starting-point  of  the  classic  school — The  natural  influence  of 
Italy — Prevalence  of  the  classic  school — Its  aristocratic  spirit 
— What  was  imitated  from  the  Italians — Its  technique  and 
matter — Artificiality  of  the  work  of  the  school — Boscan — Gar- 
cilaso — Their  immediate  followers— The  schools  of  Salamanca 
and  Seville — Gongora  and  Gongorism — The  epics — The  Arau- 
cana— The  Lusiads  ......        30 


X  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   III. 

THE  GROWTH  AND  DECADENCE  OP  THE  SPANISH  DRAMA. 

The  national  character  of  the  Spanish  drama — The  first  beginnings 
of  the  religions  plays — The  starting-point  of  the  secular  play 
— Bartolome  de  Torres  Naharro — Lope  de  Rueda — Lope  de 
Vega's  life — His  influence  on  the  drama — The  conditions  of 
the  work — Contemporaries  and  followers  of  Lope — Calderon 
— Calderon's  school         ......        60 


CHAPTER  IV. 

FORMS   OP   THE   SPANISH   DRAMA. 

The  prevailing  quality  of  the  Spanish  drama — Typical  examples — 
La  Dama  Melindrosa — El  Tejedor  de  Segovia — El  Condenado 
por  Desconfiado — The  plays  on  "honour" — A  Secreto  Agravio 
Seer  eta  Venganza — The  Auto  Sacramental — the  loa — The  Ver- 
dadero  Bios  Pan — Los  Dos  Habladores  .  .  .91 


CHAPTER  V. 

SPANISH    PROSE   ROMANCE. 

Pastorals  and  short  stories— The  original  work  of  the  Spaniard — 
The  Libros  de  Caballerias — The  Amadis  of  Gaul — Followers  of 
Amadis  of  Gaul — Influence  and  character  of  these  tales — The 
real  cause  of  their  decline — The  character  of  the  Novelas  de 
Picaros — The  Celestina — Lazarillo  de  Tormes — Guzman  de 
Alfarache — The  followers  of  Mateo  Aleman— Quevedo — Cer- 
vantes— His  life — His  work — The  minor  things — Don  Quixote      124 


CONTENTS.  XI 


CHAPTEK   VI. 


SPAIN— HISTORIANS,   MISCELLANEOUS   WRITERS,    AND 
THE   MYSTICS. 

Spanish  historians — Histories  of  particular  events— Early  his- 
torians of  the  Indies — General  historians  of  the  Indies — Gom- 
ara,  Oviedo,  Las  Casas,  Herrera,  the  Inca  Garcilaso — Mendoza, 
Moncada,  and  Melo  —  General  histories  —  Ocampo,  Zurita, 
Morales  —  Mariana  —  The  decadence — Solis  —  Miscellaneous 
writers  —  Gracian  and  the  prevalence  of  Gongorism  —  The 
mystics — Spanish  mysticism — The  influence  of  the  Inquisition 
on  Spanish  religious  literature — Malon  de  Chaide — Juan  de 
Avila — Luis  de  Granada — Luis  de  Leon — Santa  Teresa — Juan 
de  la  Cruz — Decadence  of  the  mystic  writers     .  .  .       157 


CHAPTER  VII. 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY. 

The  starting-point — Italian  influence — The  opposition  to  rhyme — 
Excuses  for  this — Its  little  effect — Poetry  of  first  half  of  Eliza- 
beth's reign — Spenser — Order  of  his  work — His  metre— Char- 
acter of  his  poetry— Sir  P.  Sidney— The  Apologie  for  Poetrie 
— His  sonnets  and  lyrics — Watson— The  Sonneteers— Other 
lyric  poetry — The  collections  and  song-books— The  historical 
poems — Fitz-Geoffrey  and  Markham— Warner — Daniel — Dray- 
ton— The  satiric  poets — Lodge — Hall — Marston — Donne  .      185 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


THE   EARLIER   DRAMATISTS. 

The  first  plays— Kesistance  to  classic  influence — Advantages  of 
this— And  the  limitations  —  The  dramatic  quality  —  Classic, 
Spanish,  and  French  drama — Unity  in  the  English  Plays — 
Ralph  Roister  Bolster— Gammer  Gurton's  Needle — Gorboduc — 


Xll  CONTENTS. 

Formation  of  the  theatre— Lyly— Greene — Peele — Kyd — Mar- 
lowe— Character  of  these  writers — Shakespeare — Guesses  about 
his  life — Order  of  his  work — Estimates  of  Shakespeare — Divi- 
sions of  his  work -The  Poems— The  Dramas— The  reality  of 
Shakespeare's  characters ......      223 


CHAPTER   IX. 

THE   ELIZABETHAN   PROSE-WRITERS. 

Elizabethan  prose— Two  schools  of  writers — Roger  Ascham — His 
books  and  style — Webbe  and  Puttenham — The  sentence — Eu- 
phuism— The  Arcadia — Sidney's  style — Short  stories — Nash's 
Unfortunate  Traveller — Nash  and  the  pamphleteers — Martin 
Marprelate — Origin  of  the  Marprelate  Tracts — The  DiotrepJies 
— Course  of  the  controversy — Its  place  in  literary  history — 
Hooker—  The  Ecclesiastical  Polity         ....      259 


CHAPTER  X. 

FRANCE.   POETRY  OP  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

The  Plr.iade  Ronsard— The  lesser  stars— The  Defenseet  Illustration 
de  la  Langue  Francaise — The  work  of  Ronsard — His  place  in 
poetry — Joachim  du  Bellay — Remi  Belleau — Ba'if — Du  Bartas 
— D'Aubigne — The  dramatic  work  of  the  Pleiade — Jodelle — 
Grevin  and  La  Taille— Montchrestien— The  comedy— La  Re- 
connue — Causes  of  failure  of  early  dramatic  literature  .  .      290 


CHAPTER  XL 

FRENCH   PROSE-WRITERS   OF   THE   LATER   SIXTEENTH   CENTURY. 

Abundance  of  later  sixteenth-century  prose — A  distinction— Sully 
— Bodin — The  great  memoir-writers  —  Carloix — La  Noue — 
D'Aubigne  —  Monluc — Brantome — The   Satyrc  Menipee — Its 


CONTENTS.  xili 

origin— Its  authors — Its  form  and  spirit— Montaigne— His 
Essays — The  seeptiei:  m  of  Montaigne — His  style— Charron 
and  Du  Vair        .  .  .  .  .  .  .      326 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN   ITALY. 

The  later  Eenaissance  in  Italy— Torquato  Tasso— His  work— The 
Gerusalemme  Liberata — Giordano  Bruno — Literary  character 
of  his  work— Giambattista  Guarini         .  .  ,  .352 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

CONCLUSION  ........       367 


INDEX . 


379 


THE   LATEE   RENAISSANCE. 


CHAPTER    I. 

THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN   SPAIN. 

THE  UNITY  OF  SPANISH  LITERATURE — LIMITS  OF  TREATMENT — A  PREVAIL- 
ING CHARACTERISTIC — THE  DIVISION  INTO  NATIVE  AND  IMITATIVE — 
THE  INHERITANCE  FROM  THE  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY — SPANISH  VERSE 
— THE    "  CANCIONEROS  " — THE    ROMANCES  —  THE    "  ROMANCEROS  " — 

THE    QUALITY   OF  THIS   POETRY SPAIN   AND   ITALY — THE    "  DIALOGO 

DE  LA  LENGUA  " — PROSE   OF  THE   EARLY   SIXTEENTH   CENTURY — THE 
INFLUENCE  OF  THE  INQUISITION. 

The  Literature  of  Spain,  of  which  the  Portuguese  is 
the  little  sister,  or  even  at  times  the  echo,  stands 
m  apart.     In  this  fact  lies  the  excuse  for  the 

The  unity  of  ... 

Spanish  ultra-  division  adopted  in  this  volume.  There  is 
at  first  sight  something  arbitrary  in  begin- 
ning a  survey  of  Literature  of  the  later  Eenaissance 
with  a  book  written  at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury.     To  carry   the   story  on   till   the   close   of   the 

A 


2       i-.riM;,i:A>   uasBk&rufti — later  renaissance. 

seventeenth  may  well  appear  to  be  a  violation  of 
proportion.  The  Renaissance  even  in  Italy  was  not  in 
its  later  stages  in  1500,  and  it  is  far  behind  us  when 
we  get  to  the  years  in  which  Boileau,  Moliere,  and 
Racine  were  writing  in  France,  while  Dryden  was 
the  undisputed  prince  of  English  poets  and  prose- 
writers.  Yet  there  is  good  critical  reason  for  making 
a  wide  distinction  between  the  one  period  of  literary 
greatness  of  the  Peninsula  and  those  stages  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  Literatures  of  England,  France,  or  Italy, 
which  belong  to  the  time  of  the  later  Renaissance. 
It  is  this — that  we  cannot,  without  separating  things 
which  are  identical,  divide  the  literature  of  Spain 
and  Portugal  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies. The  years  between  the  appearance  of  the 
Shepherd's  Calendar  and  the  death  of  Shakespeare 
form  a  period  possessing  a  character  of  its  own  in  the 
history  of  our  poetry,  our  prose,  and  our  drama.  It  is 
still  more  emphatically  true  that  French  literature, 
between  the  rise  of  the  Pleiade  and  the  death  of 
Mathurin  Regnier,  is  marked  off  sharply,  both  from 
what  had  gone  before  and  what  was  to  follow.  But 
we  cannot  draw  a  line  anywhere  across  the  Spanish 
drama,  poetry,  or  prose  story  of  the  great  time  and 
say,  Here  an  old  influence  ended,  here  a  new  one 
began.  We  have  to  deal  with  the  slow  growth,  very 
brief  culmination,  and  sudden  extinction  of  a  brilliant 
literature,  which  came  late  and  went  early,  and  which 
for  the  short  time  that  it  lasted  is  one  and  indivisible. 
It  grew  up  partly  from  native  roots,  partly  under  an 
influence  imparted  by  Italy ;  attained  its  full  stature 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN   SPAIN.  3 

in  the  early  years  of  the  seventeenth  century;  then 
"withered,  fell  into  puerile  ravings,  and  died,"  with 
the  close  of  the  Austrian  dynasty. 

As,  then,  the  Golden  Age  of  Spain  is  one,  we  are 
justified   in    taking   it   as  a  whole,  even   though  we 

Limits  of     appear  to  violate  the  harmony  of  the   ar- 

treatmcnt  rangement  of  the  series  to  which  this 
volume  belongs.  And  this  division  of  the  matter 
imposes  an  obvious  limitation  on  the  treatment  to  be 
adopted.  Spanish  literature  is,  in  one  sense,  exceed- 
ingly rich.  During  the  century  and  a  half,  or  so,  of 
its  vigour,  it  produced  a  vast  number  of  books,  and 
the  catalogue  of  its  authors  is  very  long.  Don  Nicolas 
Antonio,  the  industrious  compiler  of  the  Biblioteca 
Hispana,  has  calculated  the  number  of  mystic  and 
ascetic  works  (of  which  some  are  among  the  best  of 
Spanish  books)  at  over  three  thousand.  The  fecundity 
of  its  theatre  is  a  commonplace;  the  fluency  of  its 
poets  is  boundless;  the  bulk  of  its  prose  stories  is 
considerable ;  its  historians  are  many,  and  not  a  few 
are  good.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  much  was 
written  on  law,  theology,  and  the  arts  which  has 
value.  In  dealing  with  all  this  mass  of  printed 
matter  in  the  space  at  our  disposal,  it  is  clearly 
necessary  to  remember  the  injunction,  "il  faut  savoir 
se  borner." 

We  must,  to  begin  with,  leave  aside  all  that  is  not 
primarily  literature,  except  when  it  can  be  shown  to 
have  influenced  that  which  is.  Again,  even  in  deal- 
ing with  our  proper  subject,  we  must  submit  to 
limits.     It  is   manifestly  necessary  to   omit  scores — 


s 


4  EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — TATER   RENAISSANCE. 

nay,  hundreds — of  minor  names.  But  that  is  not  all. 
In  making  a  survey  of  a  fertile  literature  in  a  brief 
space,  we  are  always  obliged  to  go  by  kinds  and 
classes  rather  than  by  individual  writers.  But  in 
Spanish  literature  this  is  more  especially  true. 

In  the  course  of  an  introduction  to  a  translation 
of  Shakespeare's  plays  by  Seilor  Clarke,  Don  Juan 
Valera  (himself  the  author  of  stories  both  Spanish 
and  good)  has  made  a  complaint,  which  is  of  the 
nature  of  an  unconscious  confession.  He  has  lamented 
that  the  characters  of  Spanish  drama  are  so  little 
known.  An  artist,  so  he  says,  has  only  to  paint  a 
a  prevailing  young  man  in  a  picturesque  dress  on  a  rope- 
characteristic.  iadder>  with  a  beautiful  young  woman  on 
a  balcony  above  him,  and  all  the  world  recognises 
Eomeo  and  Juliet.  If  he  takes  his  anecdote  from 
Lope  and  Calderon,  nobody  will  be  able  to  guess  what 
it  is  all  about.  With  less  than  his  usual  good  sense, 
Seilor  Valera  accounts  for  the  obscurity  into  which 
the  world  has  been  content  to  allow  the  characters 
and  scenes  of  the  Spanish  drama  to  fall,  by  the 
political  decadence  of  his  country  at  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  Yet  the  passing  away  of  Spain's 
greatness  has  not  prevented  Don  Quixote  and  Sancho 
from  being  familiar  to  the  whole  world.  If  anecdote 
pictures  are  to  be  the  test,  Cervantes  has  no  reason  to 
fear  the  rivalry  of  the  English  dramatic  poet.  There 
is  less  of  Spanish  pride  than  of  its  ugly  shadow, 
Spanish  vanity,  in  Don  Juan  Valera's  explanation. 
The  Drama  of  Spain,  brilliant  as  it  was  within  its 
limits,  is  not  universally  known,  because  it  does  not 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN    SPAIN.  0 

give  what  we  find  in  Cervantes,  and  in  boundless 
profusion  in  Shakespeare,  eharacters  true  to  un- 
changing human  nature,  and  therefore  both  true  and 
interesting  to  all  time.  It  is  mainly  a  drama  of 
situation,  and  of  certain  stock  passions  working- 
through  personages  who  are  rarely  more  than  puppets. 
We  may  say  the  same  of  the  prose  stories,  whether 
Libros  de  Caballerias,  or  Novelas  de  Picaros — Books 
of  Chivalry,  or  Tales  of  Eogues.  They  all  have  the 
same  matter  and  the  same  stock  figures.  They  differ 
only  in  the  degree  of  dexterity  with  which  the  author 
has  used  his  material.  In  the  poetry  of  Spain  we  see 
two  influences  at  work — first,  the  Italian  Kenaissance, 
which  ruled  the  learned  poetry  of  the  school  of 
Garcilaso ;  and  then  the  native  "  romance "  or  ballad 
poetry,  which  held  its  ground  beside  the  more  varied 
and  splendid  metres  imitated  from  abroad.  Each  of 
these,  within  its  own  bounds,  is  very  uniform,  and 
the  works  of  each  school  vary  only  according  to  the 
writer's  greater  or  less  mastery  of  what  he  uses  in 
common  with  all  others.  Such  a  literature  is  mani- 
festly best  treated  by  classes  and  types.  Cervantes, 
indeed,  stands  apart.  His  greatness  is  not  a  towering 
superiority  but  a  difference  of  kind.  It  is  as  in- 
dividual as  the  greatness  of  Velasquez  in  painting. 

These  two  influences,  the  foreign  and  the  native, 
divided  Spanish  literature  of  the  Golden  Age  between 
Thedivisio  tnem  in  vei7  different  proportions.  To 
into  native  and  the  first  is  owing  the  whole  body  of  its 
learned  poetry,  and  part  of  its  prose.  To 
the  second  belong  all  the  "  deliveries  of  the  Spaniard's 


6  EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

self,"  as  they  may  be  called  in  a  phrase  adapted  from 
Bacon,  the  prose  tale,  the  ballad,  the  drama,  and 
the  ascetic  works  of  the  so-called  mystics.  These  are 
the  genuine  things  of  Spanish  literature,  and  in  them 
the  Spaniard  expressed  his  own  nature.  It  was  very 
shrewdly  noted  by  Aarsens  van  Sommelsdyck,  a  Hol- 
lander who  visited  Spain  in  the  later  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, that  however  solemn  the  Spaniard  may  be  in 
public,  he  is  easy  and  jocular  enough  in  private.  He 
is  very  susceptible  to  what  is  lofty  and  noble,  capable 
of  ecstatic  piety,  of  a  decidedly  grandiose  loyalty  and 
patriotism,  endowed  with  a  profound  sense  of  his  own 
dignity,  which  nerves  him  to  bear  adversity  well,  but 
which  also  causes  him  to  be  contumaciously  impene- 
trable to  facts  when  they  tell  him  he  must  yield  or 
amend  his  ways.  With  all  that,  and  perhaps  as  a 
reaction  from  all  that,  he  can  enjoy  crude  forms  of 
burlesque,  can  laugh  over  hard  realistic  pictures  of 
the  sordid  side  of  life,  and  delights  in  rather  cynical 
judgments  of  human  nature.  The  lofty  and  the  low 
have  their  representations  in  his  literature,  in  forms 
easily  traced  back  to  the  middle  ages.  About  the 
third  quarter  of  the  sixteenth  century  it  might  have 
appeared  to  a  superficial  observer  that  the  native 
element  was  overpowered  by  the  foreign.  But  the 
triumph  of  the  "  learned  "  literature  was  in  show,  not 
in  reality. 

S  The  book  already  alluded  to  as  marking  the  starting- 
point  of  the  Golden  Age  is  the  once  famous  Celestina, 
a  long  story  in  dialogue,  of  uncertain  authorship  and 
age.     It  was  written  at  some  time  between  the  con- 


THE    LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN   SPAIN.  7 

quest  of  Granada  and  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
Precision  is  in  this  case  of  no  importance,  since  the 
true  descendants  of  the  Cclestina  were  the  Picaresque 
stories.  Its  first  successor  was  the  Lazarillo  de 
Tormes,  which,  though  no  doubt  written  earlier,  ap- 
peared in  or  about  1547.  Then  at  an  interval  of  fifty 
years  came  the  Beacon  of  Life — Atalaya  de  la  Vida — 
better  known  as  Guzman  de  Alfarache,  of  Mateo 
Aleman,  and  from  him  sprang  the  great  Rogue 
family.  But  while  the  Picaresque  novel  was  gather- 
ing strength,  all  the  more  slowly  because  it  was  not 
an  imitation,  the  classic  school  of  poetry  had  blossomed, 
and  was  already  showing  signs  of  decadence.  The 
drama,  another  purely  native  growth,  had  risen  by 
degrees  alongside  the  prose  tale,  and  reached  its  full 
development  at  about  the  same  time.  Both  are  in- 
trinsically of  far  greater  value  than  the  learned  verse. 
Yet  since  their  maturity  came  later,  they  may  be 
postponed  while  the  story  of  the  school  of  Garcilaso 
is  told. 

Before  entering  upon  that,  it  is  necessary  to  say 
something  of  the  conditions  which  the  "  new  poetry  " 
m     ,    .        and  the  influence  of  the  Renaissance  found 

The  inheritance 

from  tiw fif-  before  them  when  they  began  to  influence 
tury'  Spain.  The  fifteenth  century  had  not  been 
barren  of  literature.  King  John  II.  (1407-1454)  had 
collected  round  him  a  school  of  Court  poets  whose 
chief  was  Juan  de  Mena.  Although  the  last  repre- 
sentatives of  this  school  resisted  the  innovations  of 
Boscan  and  Garcilaso  as  unpatriotic,  it  was  itself 
entirely  foreign  in  origin — being,  in  truth,  little  more 


8  EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

than  an  echo  of  Provencal  and  early  Italian  poetry. 
Juan  de  Mena,  the  Prince  of  Poets  of  his  time,  wrote 
long  allegorical  poems  in  imitation  of  Dante,  and  was 
perhaps  not  uninfluenced  by  the  French  rhAtoriquewrs. 
Indeed  the  earlier  leaders  of  the  school  made  no  secret 
of  their  debt.  The  Marquis  of  Santillana,  a  contem- 
porary of  King  John,  candidly  says,  in  a  letter  to  the 
Constable  of  Portugal,  that  he  sought  the  origin  of 
poetry  in  the  Gai  Saber  of  Provence.  The  trouba- 
dours, when  driven  from  Prance,  had  found  refuse  in 
the  dominions  of  Aragon,  and  had  there  given  rise  to 
a  school  of  imitators.  The  connection  of  Aragon  with 
Italy  was  close.  Dante  found  translators,  and  Pe- 
trarch imitators,  among  the  Catalan  poets  of  Valencia, 
and  from  thence  their  influence  spread  to  Castile. 
'  Juan  del  Encina,  who  in  1496  prefixed  a  brief  Ars 
Poetica  to  one  of  those  collections  of  lyric  verse  called 
Cancioneros,  and  who  was  himself  a  poet  of  the  Court 
school,  confessed  that  he  and  his  brother  verse- writers 
had  conveyed  largely  from  the  earlier  Italians.  More- 
over, he  made  this  the  main  ground  of  their  claim  to 
be  considered  poets.  It  was  not  till  the  next  century, 
and  until  the  last  representatives  of  this  school  found 
themselves  opposed  by  the  Italian  influence,  that  they 
began  to  claim  to  be  essentially  Spanish. 

What  there  was   of  really  Spanish  in   their  verse 
must  be  allowed  to  have  been  mainly  the  impoverish- 
ment of  the  original  models.    The  Spaniard 
has  always  been  recalcitrant  to  the  shackles 
imposed  by  complicated  and  artful  forms  of  verse,  and 
there  is  a  natural  tendency  in  him  to  drift  at  all  times 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN    SPAIN.  0 

to  his  native  trochaic  assonants  of  eight  syllables.  His 
language,  admirable  when  properly  handled  for  prose, 
wants  the  variety  of  melody  required  for  poetry.  Im- 
patience of  the  difficulties  of  metre  is  another  name 
for  the  want  of  a  due  sense  of  the  beauty  of  form. 
Indeed  it  is  not  by  its  form  that  Spanish  literature 
has  been  distinguished.  Given,  then,  a  people  who 
had  very  little  faculty  for  delicate  verse,  and  a  lan- 
guage which  wanted  both  the  wealth  of  the  Italian 
accent  and  the  flexibility  of  the  French,  and  it  is  easy 
to  see  what  was  likely  to  be  the  end  of  the  Provencal 
and  Petrarchian  influence  in  the  Court  school.  Its 
poetry,  never  more  than  an  echo,  sank  into  mechanical 
verse-making — mostly  in  eight- syllabled  couplets,  re- 
lieved by  a  broken  line  of  four.  The  inborn  preference 
of  the  Spaniard  for  loose  metres  gradually  gained  the 
upper  hand.  No  doubt  fine  verses  may  be  picked  out 
from  the  bulk  of  the  writings  of  the  troubadour  school 
of  Castile.  The  rhythmus  de  contemptu  mundi,  known 
as  the  coplccs  de  Manrique,  which  has  been  made  known 
to  English  readers  by  Mr  Longfellow,  is  even  noble 
in  its  rigid  gravity.  But  the  merit  lies  not  in  the 
melody  of  the  verse,  which  soon  becomes  monotonous. 
It  is  in  this,  that  the  coplas  give  us  perhaps  the  finest 
expression  of  one  side  of  the  Spaniard.  They  are 
full  of  what  he  himself  calls  in  his  own  untrans- 
latable word  el  dcsengafio  —  that  is  to  say,  the 
melancholy  recognition  of  the  hollowness  of  man's 
life,  and  "the  frailty  of  all  things  here"  —  not  in 
puling  self-pity,  but  in  manly  and  pious  resignation 
to  fate  and  necessity. 


10       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER    RENAISSANCE. 

This  old  or  troubadour  school  did  not  give  up  the 
Held  to  the  new  Italian  influence  without  a  struggle. 
The  can-  Its  models  continued  to  be  imitated  nearly 
cioneros.  ajj  through  the  sixteenth  century.  It  was 
praised  and  regretted  by  Lope  de  Vega  and  Cervantes. 
Boscan  and  Garcilaso  found  an  opponent  and  a  critic 
in  Cristobal  de  Castillejo,  a  very  fluent  verse- writer,  a 
most  worthy  man,  and  a  loyal  servant  of  the  house  of 
Austria,  who  died  in  exile  at  Vienna  in  1556.  El 
buen  de  Castillejo  —  the  good  Castillejo,  as  he  is 
commonly  called,  with  condescending  kindness — was 
an  excellent  example  of  the  stamp  of  critic,  more  or 
less  common  in  all  times,  who  judges  of  poetry  ex- 
clusively by  his  own  stop  -  watch.  He  condemned 
Boscan  and  Garcilaso,  not  for  writing  bad  poetry,  but 
for  not  writing  according  to  what  he  considered  the 
orthodox  model.  The  new  school  not  unnaturally 
retorted  by  wholesale  condemnation  of  the  old. 
When  Hernan,  or  Fernan,  de  Herrera  published  his 
edition  of  Garcilaso  in  1572,  he  was  rebuked  for 
quoting  Juan  del  Encina  in  the  commentary.  A 
pamphleteer,  believed  to  have  been  no  less  a  person 
than  the  Admiral  of  Castile,  whose  likeness  may  be 
seen  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery  among  the 
ambassadors  who  signed  the  peace  at  the  beginning 
of  the  reign  of  James  I.,  laughed  at  Herrera  for  quot- 
ing as  an  authority  one  who  had  become  a  name  for  a 
bad  poet.  This  was  pedantry  as  bad  as  Castillejo's, 
and  represented  an  opinion  never  generally  accepted 
by  the  Spaniards.  They  continued  to  read  the  collec- 
tions of  ancient  verse  called  Cancioneros,  even  when 


THE   LATER    RENAISSANCE    IN    SPAIN.  11 

the  new  school  was  at  the  height  of  its  vigour.  The 
Cancioneros  Generates  of  Hernan  del  Castillo,  the  great 
storehouse  of  the  poetry  of  the  fifteenth  century,  was 
reprinted,  with  some  changes,  no  less  than  nine  times 
between  1511  and  1573.  The  extreme  rarity  of  copies 
of  these  numerous  editions  proves  that  they  must  have 
been  well  thumbed  to  pieces  by  admiring  readers.  Yet 
they  constitute  no  inconsiderable  body  of  literature. 
The  modern  reprint  issued  (unfortunately  only  to  its 
own  members)  by  the  Sociedad  de  Bibliofilos  Espanoles 
is  in  two  weighty  volumes. 

In  this  Cancionero  there  are  two  elements,  destined 

to  very  different  fates.     Hernan  del  Castillo  included 

eighteen   romances    in   his    collection,  and 

The  romances.  _      .  .  . 

they  reappeared  in  subsequent  editions. 
The  importance  of  this  word  in  Spanish  literature 
seems  to  call  for  some  definition  of  its  scope.  The 
word  "romance"  bore  originally  in  Spanish  exactly 
the  same  meaning  as  in  other  tongues  descended  from 
the  Latin.  It  was  the  vernacular,  and  to  write  en 
romance  was  to  write  Castilian,  Galician,  or  Catalan. 
<fXi  romance  ni  romano "  —  neither  Romance  nor 
Eoman — is  a  phrase  bearing  more  or  less  the  meaning 
of  our  "  neither  rhyme  nor  reason."  But  little  by  little, 
by  use  and  wont,  it  came  about  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 
century  to  be  applied  exclusively  to  the  form  of  verse 
dearest  and  most  native  to  the  Spaniard,  the  already 
mentioned  trochaic  eight-syllable  assonant  metre.  As 
the  ancient  ballads  are  mainly,  though  not  exclusively, 
written  in  this  form,  they  are  called  romances.  Yet 
to  write  romances  does  not  necessarily  mean  to  write 


J 


12       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER    RENAISSANCE. 

ballads,  but  only  to  write  in  that  metre,  whether  in  the 
dialogue  of  a  play  or  in  long  narrative  poems,  or  for 
any  other  purpose. 

The  assonant  metre,  as  is  well  known,  is  not  peculiar 
to  Spain.  It  may  well  have  been  imported  into  Cas- 
tile from  France  by  those  churchmen  to  whom  the 
country  owes  so  much  of  its  architecture,  what  learn- 
ing it  had,  and  its  civilisation  when  it  began  to  revive 
from  the  merely  martial  barbarism  produced  by  the 
Moorish  conquest  But  if  the  Spaniard  did  indeed 
take  the  assonant  metre  from  his  French  teachers,  he 
soon  subjected  it  to  that  process  which  all  forms  of 
verse  are  apt  to  undergo  in  his  hands.  He  released 
it  from  shackles,  and  gave  it  a  freedom  amounting  to 
licence-.  The  romance  is  a  loose  -  flowing  rhythm,  in 
which  the  rhyme  is  made  by  the  last  accented  vowel. 
Sometimes  the  same  vowel  is  used  line  after  line  until 
it  is  exhausted.  More  commonly  the  assonant  comes 
in  alternate  lines.  As  a  rule  there  is  no  division  into 
stanzas,  but  the  verse  runs  on  till  the  speech  is  ended, 
or  the  tale  is  told.  To  this  there  are,  however,  ex- 
ceptions, and  the  romance  is  divided  into  'ordondittas—- 
that  is,  roundels  or  staves  of  four  lines,  assonanced 
either  alternately,  or  the  first  with  the  fourth  and  the 
second  with  the  third,  or  into ;  quintillasl  of  five  lines, 
with  an  assonant  in  three.  The  recalcitrance  of  the 
Spaniard  to  all  limitations  in  verse-making  has  caused 
him  to  give  a  very  wide  range  indeed  to  the  assonant. 
The  vowel  u  is  allowed  to  rhyme  with  o,  and  i  with  e, 
though  they  have  a  very  different  sound  and  force. 
The  Spaniard,  again,  allows  a  diphthong  to  be  assonant 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN    SPAIN.  13 

to  a  vowel,  although  he  pronounces  both  the  vowels  in 
his  diphthongs.  It  will  be  seen  that  such  verse  as  this 
can  be  written  with  extreme  facility.  Indeed  it  is  a 
byword  in  Spain  that  nothing  is  easier  than  to  write 
romances — badly.  The  difficulty,  in  fact,  is  to  avoid 
writing  them  in  prose  ;  and  it  is  no  small  one,  when  the 
ear  of  a  people  finds  a  rhyme  in  so  faint  a  similarity 
of  sound,  and  in  a  language  in  which  the  accent  is  at 
once  so  pronounced  and  as  little  varied.  It  is  not,  I 
trust,  superfluous  to  add  that  in  Castilian,  which  we 
call  Spanish,  there  is  a  marked  accent  in  the  last 
syllable  of  words  ending  in  a  consonant,  on  the  penult 
of  words  ending  in  a  vowel,  while  a  limited  number 
of  words  are  esclrujulo — that  is,  accented  on  the  ante- 
penult. The  addition  of  a  syllable  to  form  the  plural, 
or  of  the  adverbial  termination  mente,  does  not  alter 
the  place  of  the  accent.  These  rules,  though  nowise 
severe,  are  not  rigidly  followed.  Not  infrequently  the 
assonant  rhyme  falls  into  the  full  or  consonant  rhyme, 
while  the  Hesse  or  stave  formed  on  one  vowel,  and  its 
equivalents,  is  broken  by  a  line  corresponding  to 
nothing.  Even  the  rule  requiring  the  use  of  eight 
syllables  is  applied  with  restrictions, — an  accented 
syllable  at  the  end  counts  as  two,  while  two  un- 
accented syllables  rank  only  as  one.  It  must  be 
acknowledged  that  this  metre  is  unsatisfactory  to  an 
ear  attuned  to  the  melody  of  English  poetry.  In  our 
language  it  renders  hardly  a  tinkle.  When  we  have 
become  accustomed  to  it  in  Castilian — and  until  we 
do  it  tantalises  with  a  sense  of  something  wanting — its 
highest  virtue  seems  to  be  that  it  keeps  the  voice  of 


14       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

the  speaker  in  a  chanted  recitative.  It  is  more  akin 
to  numbered  prose  than  to  verse. 

However  incomplete  the  romance  may  seem  to  us, 
to  the  Spaniard  it  is  dear.  When  romances  were  not 
being  well  written  in  Spain,  it  was  because  nothing 
was  being  written  well.  The  metre  not  only  held  its 
ground  against  the  court  poetry  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  but  prevailed  against  the  new  Italian  influ- 
ence. Here  as  in  other  fields  the  Spaniard  was  very 
tenacious  of  the  things  of  Spain.  To  find  a  parallel  to 
what  happened  in  Spain  we  must  do  more  than  sup- 
pose that  the  Pleiade  in  France,  or  Spenser  and  his 
successors  in  England,  had  failed  to  overcome  the 
already  existing  literary  schools.  It  was  as  if  the 
ballad  metres  had  won  a  place  even  on  the  stage.  No 
Spanish  Sir  Philip  Sidney  need  have  apologised  for 
feeling  his  heart  stirred  by  those  ballads  of  the  Cid,  or 
of  the  Infantes  de  Lara,  which  answer  to  our  Chevy 
Chase.  They  were  strenuously  collected,  and  con- 
stantly imitated,  all  through  the  sixteenth  and  well 
into  the  seventeenth  century.  So  far  were  they  from 
falling  into  neglect,  that  they  were  first  able  to  shake 
the  slowly  withering  poetry  of  the  troubadour  school, 
and  then  to  fill  a  long  series  of  collections,  known,  in 
„,  „  the  beeinnin^  as  Cancioneros,  or  Libros,  or 

ceros  Sylvas  de  Romances,  but  finally  as  Roman- 

ceros.  Much  bibliographical  learning  and  controversy 
has  collected  about  these  early  editions.  Even  if  I 
could  profess  to  be  competent  to  speak  on  such  matters, 
they  would  have  no  proper  place  here.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  the  literary  historian,  the  interesting 


THE   LATER    RENAISSANCE   IN    SPAIN.  15 

fact  is  that  at  a  time  when  classic,  or  at  least  new 
influences,  born  of  the  Renaissance,  were  carrying  all 
before  them  in  France  and  England,  and  in  Italy  had 
long  ago  definitively  conquered,  the  Spaniards  did  not 
wholly  part  with  their  inheritance  from  the  Middle 
Ages. 

The  few  ballads,  and  fragments  of  ballads,  printed 
by  Hernan  del  Castillo  in  1511,  proved  so  popular 
that  an  editor  was  tempted  to  form  a  special  collec- 
tion. The  place  and  date  of  this  first  ballad-book 
proper  are  both  significant.1  It  appeared  at  Antwerp 
in  or  about  1546 — that  is  to  say,  three  years  or  so 
after  the  first  edition  of  the  poems  of  Boscan  and 
Garcilaso.  The  editor  was  one  Martin  Nucio.  Ant- 
werp, be  it  observed,  was  always  a  great  publishing 
place  for  Spanish  books,  a  fact  which  may  be  accounted 
for,  not  only  by  the  political  connection  between  Spain 
and  the  Low  Countries,  the  number  of  Spaniards  em- 
ploye^! there  in  various  capacities,  as  soldiers,  officials, 
or  traders,  and  the  then  extensive  use  of  their  lan^uao-e 
but  also  by  the  superiority  of  the  Flemish  printers. 
That  same  carelessness  of  form  which  is  found  in  the 
Spaniard's  literature  followed  him  in  lesser  arts,  where 
neatness  of  handling  was  more  necessary  than  spirit 
and  creative  faculty.  He  was,  at  any  rate  in  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  rarely  a  good 
engraver,    and    hardly   ever    a    good    printer.       The 

1  The  fullest  collection  of  Spanish  ballads  is  that  of  Duran  in  the 
Billioteca  de  Ribadeneyra  ;  but  the  best  are  in  the  Rosa  de  Romances 
of  Wolf  and  Depping,  ed.  1844-1846.  with  notes  by  Don  A.  Alcala" 
Galiano. 


16       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

Caneionero  de  Romances,  brought  out,  it  may  be, 
primarily  for  the  pleasure  of  the  Spaniards  scattered 
over  Flanders  and  Germany,  was  soon  reprinted  in 
Spain,  by  one  Esteban  de  Najera,  at  Sarragossa.  These 
contemporary  collections  are  not  quite  identical,  but 
essentially  the  same.  This  Caneionero,  or  Sylva,  de 
Romances  met  with  a  reception  which  proved  how 
strong  a  hold  his  indigenous  verse  had  on  the 
Spaniard.  Three  editions,  with  corrections  and  addi- 
tions, appeared  by  1555.  The  latest  of  these  was  not 
reprinted  until  well  into  the  next  century.  In  the 
meantime  other  editors  had  followed  Nucio  and 
Najera.  A  Romancer o  in  nine  parts  appeared  at 
places  so  far  distant  from  one  another  as  Valencia 
Burgos,  Toledo,  Alcala,  and  Madrid,  between  1593 
and  1597.  This  again  grew  into  the  great  Romancer o 
General  of  1604-1614,  wherein  there  are  a  thousand 
ballads. 

In  so  far  as  this  great  mass  of  verse  is  really  an  in- 
heritance from  the  Middle  Ages,  it  does  not  belong  to 
The  quality  of  the  subject  of  this  book.  All  that  it  is 
this  poetry.  necessary  to  do  here  is  to  note  the  fact 
that  it  did  survive,  and  did  continue  to  exerfc  an  in- 
fluence. But  nothing  is  more  doubtful  than  the 
antiquity  of  the  vast  majority  of  the  romances.  The 
best  judges  have  given  up  the  attempt  to  class  them 
by  age,  and  indeed  that  must  needs  be  a  hopeless  task 
where  poems  have  been  preserved  by  oral  tradition 
alone,  and  have  therefore  been  subject  to  modification 
by  every  succeeding  generation.  The  presence  of  very 
ancient  words  is  no  proof  of  antiquity,  since  they  may 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN    SPAIN.  17 

be  put  in  by  an  imitator,  Neither  is  the  mention  of 
comparatively  recent  events,  or  of  such  things  as 
clocks  or  articles  of  commerce  only  known  in  later 
times,  of  itself  proof  that  the  framework  of  the  ballad 
was  not  ancient  when  it  took  its  final  shape.  The 
Romances  were  collected  very  much  in  the  style  of 
the  Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Border,  and  we  all  know 
with  what  facility  remains  of  popular  poetry  are  found 
when  there  is  a  demand  for  them,  when  no  critical 
tests  are  applied,  and  when  the  searchers  are  endowed 
with  a  faculty  for  verse-writing.  The  Moorish  ballads 
have  been  called  old,  and  yet  nothing  is  more  certain 
than  that  they  were  the  fruits  of  a  literary  fashion 
of  the  later  sixteenth  century.  The  Moor,  like  the 
Eed  Man,  became  a  picturesque  figure  only  when  he 
ceased  to  be  dangerous.  Another  class  of  the  ballads, 
those  called  of  chivalry,  are  full  of  references  showing 
that  the  writers  were  acquainted  with  Ariosto,  and  can- 
not have  been  written  before  the  middle  of  the  century 
at  the  earliest.  Where  the  romance  is  identical  in  sub- 
ject with,  and  very  similar  in  language  to,  a  passage 
in  the  great  chronicle  of  Alfonso  the  Wise,  or  other 
unquestionably  mediaeval  work  preserved  in  writing 
of  known  antiquity,  it  may  be  accepted  as  ancient. 
Where  that  test  cannot  be  applied,  it  is  safer  not 
to  think  that  the  ballad  is  older  than  the  sixteenth 
century.  In  some  cases  the  inspiration  can  be  shown 
to  have  been  French.  The  subject  of  the  Molinero  de 
Arcos,  a  popular  ballad  existing  in  several  versions, 
was  taken  from  a  well-known  French  farce,  Le  Meunier 
(VArlcux. 

B 


18       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

It  is  very  necessary,  when  judging  this  great  body 
of  verse,  to  stand  on  our  guard  against  certain  be- 
setting fallacies.  There  is  always  a  marked  tendency 
in  collectors  to  excuse  what  is  grotesque  on  the  ground 
that  it  is  ancient,  and  to  pardon  what  is  bad  on  the 
ground  that  it  is  popular.  The  Spanish  ballads  have 
suffered  from  the  too  great  zeal  with  which  modern 
editors  have  reprinted  what  was  accepted  by  the  in- 
discriminate taste  of  first  collectors.  Many  of  the 
ballads  belong  to  the  class  of  romances  de  ciegos — i.e., 
"  blindmen's  ballads  "  —  which  were  doggerel  at  all 
times.  Others  are  not  above  the  level  of  the  poets' 
corner  of  not  over -exacting  newspapers.  Even  in 
the  best,  the  intention  and  the  first  inspiration  are 
commonly  far  better  than  the  expression.  The 
Spaniard's  slovenliness  of  form  is  found  here  as  else- 
where. Lockhart,  in  the  preface  to  his  adaptations, 
has  rebuked  the  Spaniards  for  "neglecting  old  and 
simpler  poets,"  who  wrote  the  romances,  in  favour 
of  authors  "  who  were  at  the  best  ingenious  imitators 
of  classical  or  Italian  models."  He  has  himself,  how- 
ever, subjected  those  he  selected  for  translation  into 
English  to  a  treatment  which  conveys  a  severe  and  a 
just  critical  judgment.  A  comparison  between  his 
ballads  and  the  orginals  will  show  that  he  occasion- 
ally, though  very  rarely,  weakened  a  forcible  phrase. 
Now  and  again  there  are  signs  that  his  knowledge  of 
Spanish  was  not  deep.  He  writes,  "  So  spake  the 
brave  Montanez,"  as  if  that  had  been  the  name  of  the 
Lord  of  Butrago,  whereas  montane*  (mountaineer)  was 
a  common  old  Spanish  equivalent  for  noble,  a  custom 


THE    LATER    RENAISSANCE   IN    SPAIN.  19 

due  to  the  belief  that  the  old  Castilian  aristocracy 
drew  its  "blue  blood,"  shown  by  its  grey  or  blue 
eyes,  from  the  Visigoths,  who  held  the  mountains  of 
Asturias  against  the  Moors.  The  Lord  of  Butrago  was 
a  historical  personage,  and  the  head  of  the  house  of 
Mendoza.  But  if  a  few  faults  of  this  kind  can  be 
found,  there  are  to  be  set  off  against  them  a  hundred 
passages  in  which  he  has  suppressed  a  redundancy  or 
replaced  the  purely  prosaic  original  by  poetry.  A 
very  good  test  case  is  to  be  found  in  the  last  verse  of 
the  Wandering  Knight's  song — which  stands  thus  in 
Lockhart : — 

u  I  ride  from  land  to  land, 
I  sail  from  sea  to  sea ; 
Some  day  more  kind  I  fate  may  find, 
Some  night  kiss  thee." 

What  can  be  more  pretty  or  more  fit  ?  but  it  is  not 
in  the  Cancioncro  de  Romances,  where  the  words 
stand : — 

"  Andando  de  Sierra  en  Sierra 
Por  orillas  de  la  mar, 
Por  provar  si  en  mi  ventnra 
Ay  lngar  donde  avadar  ; 
Pero  por  vos,  mi  seiiora, 
Todo  se  ha  de  comportar." 

"Wandering  from  hills  to  hills  by  the  shore  of  the 
sea,  to  try  whether  my  fortune  will  give  me  a  ford ; 
but  for  you,  my  lady,  all  things  are  to  be  endured,"  is 
the  bald  literal  meaning,  which,  though  it  is  at  least 
as  old  as  1555,  and  is  simple  enough,  is  also,  un- 
fortunately, bathos.     And  this  is  very  far  from  being 


20       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

a  solitary  example.  The  result  is,  that  Lockhart's 
ballads  give  an  unduly  high  estimate  of  the  originals 
to  those  who  only  know  the  English  rifacimento.  A 
reader  who  refuses  to  be  enslaved  by  authority  will 
find  that  he  is  constantly  compelled  to  make  allowances 
for  the  faults  which  Lockhart  was  in  the  fortunate 
position  of  being  able  to  correct — for  redundancies, 
for  lines  of  mere  prose,  for  vulgarities,  for  flat,  spirit- 
less endings.  He  will  often  feel  that  he  is  reading 
mere  repetitions  in  a  popular  form,  written  by  pain- 
fully uninspired  authors,  whose  too  frequent  use  of 
stock  literary  phrases  shows  that  they  were  far  from 
the  simplicity  attributed  to  the  ballad-maker.  It  is 
true  that  poetic  feeling,  and  some  poetic  matter  in 
the  shape  of  traditional  stories,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
romances,  but,  as  it  were,  in  solution.  iSTor  is  it  to  be 
denied  that  it  is  to  the  honour  of  a  people  when  it 
clings  to  a  national  form  of  verse,  and  to  its  own 
traditions.  Yet  neither  good  poetic  intention  nor  the 
most  respectable  patriotism  will  make  inferior  execu- 
tion anything  but  inferior  even  in  national  ballads.  It 
is  unquestionably  unjust  to  find  fault  with  a  body  of 
professedly  unlearned  writers  because  they  show  the 
defects  of  men  who  have  not  a  severe  literary  training. 
But  the  claim  made  for  the  Spanish  romances  is  that 
they  express  the  natural  feelings  of  a  poetic  people 
with  simplicity :  it  is  quite  fair  to  answer  that  the 
great  mass  of  them  belong  to  a  time  of  high  literary 
cultivation ;  that  they  show  signs  of  being  the  work 
of  its  inferior  writers ;  that,  even  at  their  best,  their 
loose  metrical  form — far  looser  as  it  is  than  our  own 


THE    LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN    SPAIN.  21 

ballad  stanza — permitted  them  to  be  written  by  per- 
sons who  could  not  have  mastered  even  doggerel 
rhyme ;  and  that  they  are  too  often  wanting  in  the 
direct,  simple,  passionate  expression  by  which  the 
rudest  genuine  poet  can  force  his  way  to  the  realm  of 
poetry. 

It  was  a  real,  but  in  all  probability  an  inevitable, 
misfortune  that  the  best  poetic  faculty  in  Spain  during 
spam  ami    the  sixteenth  century  neglected  the  native 
itaiy.  metre,  and  turned  for  inspiration  "to  the 

sweet  and  stately  measures  of  the  Italian  poesie."  An 
Italian  influence,  as  has  been  already  pointed  out,  was 
no  new  thing  in  Spain,  and  as  the  sixteenth  century 
drew  on  it  was  sure  to  be  felt  again.  Italy,  indeed, 
was  full  of  Spaniards.  They  were  numerous  at  the 
papal  Court,  and  the  wars  for  Naples  brought  them  in 
greatly  increased  numbers.  Uncil  the  close  of  the 
fifteenth  century  those  who  settled  in  the  southern 
kingdom  were  mainly  drawn  from  Aragon.  A  great 
change  came  with  the  reign  of  Ferdinand  the  Catholic. 
He  claimed  Naples  by  right  of  his  inherited  crown  of 
Aragon,  but  he  fought  for  it  with  the  forces,  and  the 
arms,  of  Castile.  Isabel  was  tenacious  of  her  rights  as 
queen  of  the  greater  kingdom,  but  she  was  scrupulous 
in  fulfilling  her  wifely  duty  to  comfort  her  husband. 
She  supported  him  with  her  own  subjects.  After  her 
death  he  was  regent,  except  for  the  short  period  during 
which  he  was  displaced  by  his  worthless  son-in-law, 
Philip  the  Handsome.  Thus  the  Castilians  came  more 
directly  in  contact  with  Italy  and  Italian  civilisation 
than  they  had  ever  done  before.     They  abounded  as 


22       EUROPEAN    LITERATURE — LATER    RENAISSANCE. 

soldiers,  as  diplomatists,  lay  and  ecclesiastical,  and  as 
administrators.  Some  among  them  were  sure  to  feel 
the  artistic  and  literary  influences  of  that  many-sided 
time.  The  way  was  prepared  in  Spain  by  the  alliance 
between  the  crowns  of  Castile  and  Aragon,  which 
could  not  give  the  country  administrative  unity,  but 
did  give  an  internal  peace.  It  was  a  time  of  expan- 
sion and  vigour.  Isabel  had  favoured  learning.  Her 
favourite  scholar,  Antonio  de  Lebrija — better  known 
by  the  Latinised  form  of  his  name  as  Nebrissensis — 
drew  up  a  Castilian  grammar  and  dictionary.  The 
language  came  rapidly  to  maturity,  and  was  in  fact 
full  grown  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
This  speedy  maturity,  though  perhaps  not  for  the 
good  of  the  language  in  the  end,  was  natural.  Cas- 
tilian, in  spite  of  a  large  admixture  of  Arabic  words, 
is  so  thoroughly  Latin  that  little  was  needed  to  fit  it 
for  literary  purposes  when  once  the  study  of  classical 
models  was  seriously  begun — much  as  the  art  of  print- 
ing came  quickly  to  perfection  because  the  early  typo- 
graphers had  beautifully  executed  manuscripts  before 
them  as  models. 

The  early  sixteenth  century  in  Spain  was  not  barren 
in  prose-writers,  mostly  didactic,  and  also  for  the  most 
part  imitators  of  the  Italians.  Francisco  de  Villalobos, 
of  whom  little  is  known  except  that  he  was  doctor  to 
Ferdinand  the  Catholic  and  the  Emperor  Charles  V., 
and  Fernan  Perez  de  Oliva  of  Cordova  (1492-1530), 
are  the  best  remembered  of  the  class.  But  the  Prob- 
lems of  the  first,  and  the  treatise  on  the  Dignity  of 
Man  of  the  second,  are  mainly  notable  as  examples 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN    SPAIN.  23 

of   the  growing   wish   to   write   Castiliau   for   serious 
purposes.1 

But  a  more  interesting  proof  of  the  care  the  Span- 
iards were  giving  to  their  language  is  to  be  found  in 
tu Spanish    the  Diaiogo  de  la  Lengua2 — Talk  about  our 
tongue.  Language,  as  it  may  be  freely  but  not  in- 

accurately translated.  This  little  book  appears  to  have 
been  written  about,  and  perhaps  a  little  after,  1530, 
but  was  not  printed  till  Mayans  included  it  in  his 
The  Diaiogo  Origenes  de  la  Lengua  Castillana  in  the  last 
de  la  Lengua.  centUry.  There  is  strong  internal  evidence 
to  show  that  it  was  the  work  of  one  Juan  de  Valdes, 
a  Spaniard  belonging  to  the  colony  settled  in  Naples, 
a  Castilian  by  birth,  and  a  member  of  the  doubt- 
fully orthodox  society  collected  round  Vittoria  Co- 
lonna.  Juan  de  Valdes  himself  is  included  in  the 
short  list  of  Spanish  Protestants,  and  his  heterodoxy 
accounts  for  the  length  of  time  during  which  his 
work  remained  in  manuscript.  He  smelt  of  the  fagot, 
as  the  French  phrase  has  it.  All  who  possess  even 
a  slight  acquaintance  with  the  literary  habits  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  are  aware  that 
we  must  not  draw  from  the  fact  that  work  remained 
in  manuscript  the  deduction  that  it  was  little  known. 
The  Diaiogo  de  la  Lengua  was  never  quite  forgotten. 
It  is  in  itself  somewhat  disappointing,  being  altogether 
narrower  in  scope  and   less  ambitious   in  aim  than 

1  For  Villalobos  see  Bibliotcca  de  Ribadeneyra,  B.  xxxvi.  There  is 
a  modern  edition  of  Perez  de  Oliva.     Madrid,  1787. 

a  Origencs  de  la  Lengua  Castillana.  Mayans  y  Siscar.  Madrid, 
ed.  of  1873. 


24       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

Joachim  du  Bellay's  Defense  et  Illustration  de  la 
Langue  francaise,  published  in  1549.  Much  of  it 
is  devoted  to  nice  points  in  the  use  of  words,  while 
the  scholarly,  perhaps  also  the  patriotic,  leanings  of 
Valdes  led  him  to  assume  the  untenable  position  that 
the  few  Greek  colonies  on  the  Mediterranean  coast  of 
Spain  had  spread  the  use  of  their  language  all  over 
the  country  before  it  was  displaced  by  the  Latin. 
But  though  the  Dialogo  is  not,  like  the  Defense,  a  great 
literary  manifesto,  and  though  its  learning  is  at  times 
fantastic,  it  has  some  intrinsic  interest,  and  no  small 
value  as  a  piece  of  evidence.  That  exceedingly 
difficult  literary  form  the  dialogue  is  very  fairly 
mastered.  The  four  speakers — two  Spaniards  and 
two  Italians — who  take  part  in  the  conversation  have 
a  distinct  dramatic  reality,  and  the  tone  of  talk, 
familiar,  occasionally  even  witty  in  form,  but  serious 
in  substance,  is  well  maintained.  The  scheme  is  that 
three  of  a  party  of  four  gentlemen  who  are  spending  a 
day  at  a  villa  on  the  Bay  of  Naples  join  in  a  friendly 
conspiracy  to  draw  the  fourth,  whose  name,  by  the 
way,  is  Valdes,  into  expounding  to  them,  before  they 
take  horse  to  return  to  the  city,  how  a  cultivated  man 
ought  to  speak  and  write  Castilian. '  The  doctrine  of 
Valdes  differs  significantly  from  the  lesson  enforced 
by  Joachim  du  Bellay.  He  does  not  call  upon  his 
countrymen  to  go  forth  to  the  conquest  of  the 
haughty  Greeks  and  Eomans.  On  the  contrary,  it 
is  his  contention  that  although  the  vocabulary  re- 
quires refining,  and  the  grammar  needs  to  be  better 
fixed,  the  language  is  already  as  fit  for  every  purpose 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   EN    SPAIN.  25 

of  literature  as  the  Italian,  or  even  as  the  classic 
tongues.  With  the  pride  of  a  genuine  Spaniard  he 
seeks  his  examples  in  the  refrancs,  the  proverbs  and 
proverbial  phrases.  He  makes  free  use  of  the  collec- 
tion formed  in  the  fifteenth  century  by  the  Marquess 
of  Santillana,  who  gathered  the  traditional  sayings 
''  from  the  old  women  sitting  round  the  hearth." 
Valdes  may  be  held  to  have  given  evidence  in  support 
of  his  own  belief  in  the  maturity  of  the  language. 
The  Castilian  of  the  Didlogo  has  very  little  in  it  that 
is  antiquated,  and  where  it  differs  from  the  modern 
tongue  it  is  in  being  more  terse  and  manly.  His 
literary  doctrine,  which  is  rather  indicated  than  ex- 
pounded, would  have  commended  itself  to  our  Queen 
Anne  men.  To  be  simple  and  direct,  to  avoid  affecta- 
tion, to  prefer  at  all  times  the  natural  and  straight- 
forward way  of  saying  what  you  have  to  say — that 
is  the  advice  of  Juan  de  Valdes.  Withal,  he  has  no 
squeamish  dislike  of  the  common,  when,  as  in  the  case 
of  his  beloved  proverbs,  it  is  also  pure  Spanish.  The 
principles  of  Valdes  might  have  been  fatal  to  a  stately 
and  embroidered  eloquence  (of  which  Castilian  has  in 
any  case  no  great  store),  but  they  would  preserve  a 
literature  from  the  affected  folly  of  Gongorism  on  the 
one  hand,  and  from  the  grey  uniformity  of  general 
terms,  which  was  the  danger  incident  to  the  classic 
literature  of   the  eighteenth  century. 

Valdes,  who  cited  Garcilaso  with  praise,  would  not 
have  agreed  in  many  things  with  Cristobal  de  Castil- 
lejo,  but  he  would  have  applauded  his  saying  that 
Castilian  is  friendly  to  a  "  cierta  clara  brevedad  " — to 


2G        EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

a  certain  lucid  brevity.  We  shall  be  better  able  to 
Theproscofthe  JudSe  later  whether  the  recognition  of  this 
early  sixteenth  truth  does  not  lead  directly  to  agreement 
with  Mr  Borrow,  when  he  says  that  Spanish 
Literature  is  not  wholly  worthy  of  the  language. 
Lucid  brevity  is  certainly  not  the  quality  to  be  noted 
in  Spanish  prose- writers  of  what  we  may  call  the  time 
of  preparation  —  the  earlier  sixteenth  century.  The 
quality  may  indeed  be  found  in  an  eminent  degree  in 
the  writings  of  Spaniards  who  were  not  men  of  letters 
— in  the  despatches  of  Cortes,  or  in  the  numerous 
extant  narratives  of  soldiers  or  priests  who  were  eye- 
witnesses of  the  wars  of  Italy,  of  the  sack  of  Eome,  or 
of  the  conquest  of  America.  It  would  be  easy  to 
make  an  excellent  collection  of  stories  of  adventure 
from  their  letters,  which  would  show  the  masculine 
force  and  the  savoury  quality  of  Castilian.  But  these 
were  men  of  the  sword,  or  churchmen  as  adventurous 
as  they — not  men  of  letters  who  knew  by  what  devious 
paths  the  Muses  should  be  approached.  The  prose- 
writers  of  this  epoch  as  a  class  need  not  detain  us  in 
what  must  be  a  brief  outline  portrait  of  Spanish  litera- 
ture. There  is,  however,  one  exception  in  Antonio  de 
Guevara,  the  Bishop  of  Mondonedo  (//.  1545),  who  is 
best  known  to  us  as  the  author  of  the  once  famous 
Golden  Epistles,  if  only  for  the  sake  of  the  influence 
he  may  have  had  on  Lyly.1  Guevara^  wan£&  indeed, 
the  quaint  graceful  fancy,  and  also  the  oddity  of  the 

1  The  early  editions  and  translations  of  Guevara  are  very  numer- 
ous. The  passages  spoken  of  in  the  text  will  be  found  in  Biblioteca 
de  Jtibadcneyra,  Obras  de  Filosofos. 


THE   LATER    RENAISSANCE   IN   SPAIN.  27 

English  writer;  but  it  is  possible  that  his  senten- 
tious antithetical  style  had  some  share  in  producing 
euphuism.  Guevara  is  also  worth  notice  as  an  early, 
though  not  the  earliest,  example  of  the  pretentious- 
ness and  the  tendency  to  wordy  platitude  which 
have  been  so  fatal  in  Spanish  literature.  He  had 
knowledge  both  of  books  and  the  world,  and  some 
command  of  sarcasm.  These  qualities  were,  how- 
ever, swamped  in  the  "flowing  and  watery  vein"  of 
his  prose  style.  Xo  writer  ever  carried  the  seesaw 
antithetical  manner  to  a  more  provoking  extent.  To 
make  one  phrase  balance  another  appears  to  have 
been  his  chief  aim,  and  in  order  to  achieve  this  end 
he  repeated  and  amplified.  In  his  own  time,  when 
whatever  was  at  once  sound  as  moralising,  learned, 
and  professedly  too  good  for  the  vulgar  was  received 
with  respect,  Guevara  had  a  wide  popularity  both  in 
Spain  and  abroad.  To-day  he  is  almost  unreadable, 
and  for  a  reason  which  it  is  easy  to  make  clear.  It 
is  known  that  La  Fontaine  took  the  subject  of  the 
Paysan  clu  Danube  from  the  Golden  Epistles  indirectly 
if  not  directly.  Spaniards  may  be  found  to  boast 
that  there  is  nothing  in  the  fable  which  is  not  in 
their  countrymen.  This  is  partly  true,  but  it  is  stated 
in  the  wrong  way.  The  accurate  version  is  that  there 
is  nothing  in  Guevara's  prose  which  is  not  in  La 
Fontaine's  verse,  but  that  it  is  said  in  several  hundred 
times  as  many  words,  and  that  the  meaning  (not  in 
itself  considerable)  is  smothered  in  tiresome  digressions 
and  amplifications. 

A  few  words,  and  they  need  be  very  few,  on  the  in- 


28       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

fluence  of  the  Inquisition  seem  not  out  of  place  in  a 
The  influx  of  history  of  any  part  of  Spanish  life  in  the 
the  inquisition,  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  They 
are  even  to  be  justified  by  the  fact  that  its  oppressive 
influence  has  been  called  on  to  account  for  the  wither- 
ing of  the  national  will  and  intelligence,  which  dried 
up  the  very  sources  of  literature.  The  prevalence  of 
the  destructive  affectation  called  Gongorism  has 
been  excused  by  Mr  Ticknor  on  the  ground  that 
men  were  driven  back  on  mere  playing  with  words 
because  the  Inquisition  made  thinking  dangerous. 
But  we  are  met  at  once  by  the  problem  of  the  Sufi 
pipkin.  It  is  hard  to  tell  which  is  potter  and 
which  is  pot.  Did  the  Spanish  intellect  wither  be- 
cause the  Inquisition  wrapped  it  in  over-tight  swad- 
dling-clothes ?  or  did  the  Spaniard  first  create  and 
then  submit  to  this  repressive  institution  because  he 
had  little  tendency  to  speculation  ?  To  judge  by 
what  went  before  and  by  what  has  come  after  the 
Inquisition,  the  second  reading  of  the  riddle  is  at  least 
as  plausible  as  the  first.  However  that  may  be,  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  the  Inquisition  is  to  be  made 
responsible  for  the  carelessness  of  form  and  the 
loquacious  commonplace,  which  are  the  main  defects 
of  Spanish  prose  and  verse,  while  it  may  fairly  claim 
to  have  helped  to  preserve  Spanish  literature  from 
one  grave  fault  so  visible  in  parts  of  our  own.  The 
Holy  Office,  which  allowed  Lope  de  Vega  to  write 
La  Esclava  de  su  Galan,  would  not  have  punished  him 
for  writing  an  As  You  Like  It.  Since  it  suffered 
Cervantes  to  create  Don  Quiuote,  it  would  not  have 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN    SPAIN.  29 

burnt  the  author  of  a  Novelet  de  Picaros,  who  had 
made  his  hero  as  real  as  Gil  Bias.  The  Inquisition 
was  no  more  responsible  for  the  hasty  writing  of  Lope 
than  for  his  undue  complacence  towards  the  vices  of 
his  patron  the  Duke  of  Sessa.  A  literature  which  could 
produce  La  Viola  es  Sueno,  El  Condenado  por  Desconfiado, 
and  the  Mdgico  Prodigioso,  had  all  the  freedom  neces- 
sary to  say  the  profoundest  things  on  man's  passions  and 
nature  in  the  noblest  style.  It  was  his  own  too  great 
readiness  to  say  "  This  will  do,"  and  not  the  Inqui- 
sition, which  prevented  Tirso  de  Molina  from  making 
La  Venganza  de  Tamar  as  perfect  in  form  all  through 
as  it  is  in  one  scene.  The  Church  had  no  quarrel 
with  perfection  of  form.  It  had,  indeed,  a  quarrel 
with  mere  grossness  of  expression,  and  would  certainly 
have  frowned  on  many  so-called  comic  scenes  of  our 
own  Elizabethan  plays.  This  was  a  commendable  fas- 
tidiousness of  taste  not  peculiar  to  the  Spanish  Church. 
The  Spaniard  may  not  be  always  moral,  but  he  has 
seldom  been  foul-mouthed.  In  this,  as  in  other  re- 
spects, the  Church  spoke  for  the  nation ;  but  it  was 
the  effective  administrative  instrument  which  could 
coerce  an  offending  minority  into  decency — and  that 
we  may  surely  count  to  it  for  righteousness. 


30 


CHAPTER    II. 

THE   SPANISH   LEARNED    POETS. 

THE  STARTING-POINT  OF  THE  CLASSIC  SCHOOL  —  THE  NATURAL  IN- 
FLUENCE OF  ITALY  —  PREVALENCE  OF  THE  CLASSIC  SCHOOL  —  ITS 
ARISTOCRATIC  SPIRIT — WHAT  WAS  IMITATED  FROM  THE  ITALIANS — 
ITS  TECHNIQUE   AND   MATTER — ARTIFICIALITY   OF  THE  WORK  OF  THE 

SCHOOL BOSCAN GARCILASO  —  THEIR    IMMEDIATE     FOLLOWERS — 

THE    SCHOOLS    OF    SALAMANCA    AND    SEVILLE — GONGORA    AND    GUN- 
GORISM — THE   EPICS — THE   '  ARAUCANA  ' — THE   '  LUSIADS. ' 

Mr   Ticknor   has   made    the  very  just    remark,  that 

the  manner  of  the  introduction   of  the  later  Italian 

influence  into  Spanish  poetry  enables  us  to 

The  starting-  r  r  J 

point  of  the  see  for  once  in  a  way  exactly,  when  and 
at  whose  instigation  a  literary  revolution 
was  begun.  The  story  is  told  by  the  best  possible 
authority,  byMuan  Boscan,  who  was  one  of  the  leaders 
of  the  movement,  in  the  long  letter  to  the  Duchess 
of  Soma,  which  is  printed  as  a  preface  to  the  second 
book  of  the  collected  works  of  himself  and  his  friend 
Garcilaso  de  la  Vega,  published  at  Barcelona  in  1543.1 
En    (to    give    him    his    native    title)    Juan     Boscan 

1  I  have  used  the  first  edition  <>f  Boscan,  P>arcclona,  154.'),  Imt  have 
seen  mention  of  a  modern  reprint  by  William  J.  Knapp,  Madrid,  1875. 


THE    SPANISH   LEA11NED    POETS.  31 

Almogaver  was  a  Catalan  of  a  noble  family  and  of 
good  estate.  The  date  of  his  birth  is  uncertain,  but 
it  probably  fell  in  the  last  years  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  He  died  in  1540  at  Perpignan,  where  he 
had  gone  in  discharge  of  his  duty  as  ayo,  or  tutor,  to 
that  formidable  person  the  great  Duke  of  Alva.  The 
story  has  been  often  told,  but  must  needs  be  repeated 
in  every  history  of  Spanish  literature.  Boscan,  who 
had  already  written  verse  in  the  old  forms  of  the 
previous  century,  was  a  cultivated  gentleman  who 
had  served  in  Italy,  and  had  there  acquired  a  good 
knowledge  of  the  language.  This  he  afterwards 
turned  to  account  in  a  translation  of  Castiglione's 
Courtier,  which  was  considered  by  the  Spaniards  as 
not  inferior  to  the  original,  and  had  great  popularity. 
In  1526  he  attended  the  Court  at  Granada,  and  there 
met  Andrea  Navagiero  the  Venetian  ambassador. 
Navagiero  urged  him  to  write  "  in  the  Italian  manner." 
Boscan  turned  the  advice  over  in  his  mind  during  his 
long  ride  back  to  Barcelona,  and  finally  decided  to 
act  on  it,  though  not  without  doubts,  and  not  until 
he  had  been  encouraged  by  a  friend.  This  was  the 
far  more  famous  Garcia  Laso  de  la  Vega,  whose 
names,  according  to  a  not  uncommon  custom,  were 
combined  into  Garcilaso.1  He  was  born  in  1503  of 
a  very  ancient  house  of  nobles  of  Toledo,  and  was 
killed  by  being  hurled  from  a  ladder  while  leading  a 
storming-party  at  Frejus  in  1536.  Little  is  known 
of  their  friendship,  and  indeed  it  would  seem    that 

1  Tcsoro  (hi  Parnate  h'x/Ktriul  of  Quintana,  41-51.       BibUoteoa  de 
Ribadeneyra,  vol.  xxxii. 


32       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

they  cannot  have  seen  much  of  one  another,  for 
Boscan  spent  most  of  his  life  on  his  estate  or  at 
Court,  whereas  Garcilaso,  who  was  first  a  page  and 
then  soldier  to  Charles  V.,  lived,  in  common  with  all 
who  followed  "the  conquering  banners"  of  the 
emperor,  on  the  march  or  on  shipboard,  from  the 
Danube  to  Tunis. 

It  would  unquestionably  be  an  error  to  conclude 
from  the  exact  manner  of  its  beginning  that  there 
The  natural  in-  would  have  been  no  Spanish  imitation  of 
jiuence  of  itaiy.  Italian  models  if  Boscan  had  not  met 
Navagiero  at  Granada  in  1526.  Garcilaso,  Diego  de 
Mendoza,  Gutierre  de  Cetina,  and  others,  would  no 
doubt  have  begun  to  write  pastorals,  epistles,  and  can- 
zones "  in  the  Italian  manner  "  in  any  case.  Allowing 
for  the  strength  of  the  Italian  influence  of  the  day, 
the  close  kinship  of  the  two  languages,  the  frequent 
intercourse  between  the  peoples,  the  ease  with  which 
Castilian  could  be  run  into  a  Tuscan  mould,  this  was 
inevitable.  Yet  the  story  not  only  gives  a  curious 
incident  in  literary  history,  but  it  is  characteristic  of 
the  classic  poetry  of  Spain.  Boscan  we  see  took  to 
playing  with  the  foreign  metres  as  a  mere  exercise  of 
ingenuity,  and  as  an  amusement  for  his  leisure.  He 
implies  that  Garcilaso  acted  on  the  same  motives  as 
himself.  With  such  a  beginning  there  was  an  obvious 
danger  that  the  Spaniards  would  work  as  mere  pupils 
and  produce  only  school  exercises. 

The  ample  following  found  by  these  two  is  itself  a 
proof  that  Navagiero's  advice  and  Boscan's  docility 
were  hardly  necessary.      It  needed  only  an  accident 


THE  SPANISH  LEARNED  POETS.  33 

to   provoke    the    literary   activity   of    the    Italianate 
Spaniards  gathered  round  the  emperor,  in 

ir FCVCtl&TtCC  OJ 

the  classic  the  Court  of  Borne,  at  Naples,  and  at  home, 
where  the  "  learned  "  men  were  all  readers 
of  Italian  and  of  Latin.  Greek  was  never  much  read 
in  Spain,  though  a  few  of  her  scholars  were  good 
Hellenists.  The  ambition  of  the  poets  of  the  school 
of  Boscan  and  Garcilaso  is  shown  by  their  favourite 
epithet  of  praise — the  word  dodo.  The  literal  sense  is 
"learned,"  but  educated  expresses  its  true  meaning 
more  accurately.  It  did  not  necessarily  imply  much 
more  than  this,  that  the  poet  was  familiar  with 
Horace  as  well  as  with  Sannazzaro  and  Ariosto,  which, 
at  a  time  when  Latin  was  the  language  of  education 
and  diplomacy,  and  Italian  was  the  language  of 
society,  hardly  amounted  to  learning,  in  the  full 
sense  of  the  word.  The  seed  fell  on  well- prepared 
soil.  A  quick  and  copious  harvest  sprang  up,  which 
for  a  time  overshadowed  all  other  forms  of  literary 
growth.  The  second  half  of  the  sixteenth  century 
was  the  time  of  the  learned  poets  of  Spain.  The 
school  lasted,  indeed,  into  the  seventeenth  century, 
but  it  had  produced  its  best  work  before  1600. 

The  origin  of  this  poetry  would  of  itself  lead  us  to 
expect  to  find  it  composed  of  imitators  who  produced 
it*  aristocratic  more  or  less  ingenious  school  exercises. 
spirit.  its  works  are  extant  to  show  that  the  ex- 

pectation would  be  well  founded.  Again,  we  should 
expect  to  find  that  it  was  always  much  more  of  a 
society  fashion  than  a  manifestation  of  the  real 
qualities  of  the  Spaniard  in  literature,  and  here  also 

c 


34       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

experience  will  be  found  to  confirm  expectation. 
It  was  an  aristocratic  school,  not  perhaps  quite  so 
indifferent  to  appearing  in  print  as  some  others 
have  been,  but  still  not  uncommonly  satisfied  to 
leave  its  work  in  manuscript.  These  poets  could 
afford  to  be  indifferent  to  publication,  since  they  did 
not  thereby  injure  their  fame  in  the  only  world  to 
which  they  appealed.  They  were  careless  of  the  great 
unlearned  public,  whose  tastes  favoured  the  romances 
and  the  theatre.  Manuscript  copies  sufficed  for  their 
own  limited  society.  Luis  de  Leon,  for  instance,  was 
the  recognised  chief  of  the  Castilian  learned  poets  in 
his  lifetime,  yet  his  works  were  not  printed  till  they 
were  brought  out,  forty  years  after  his  death,  by 
Quevedo,  in  the  idle  hope  of  converting  his  country- 
men from  Gongorism  by  the  sight  of  better  examples, 
while  Gongora  was  able  to  found  a  school  of  affecta- 
tion by  his  influence,  and  yet  his  poems  were  not 
published  during  his  lifetime.  The  learned  poets  did 
not  expect  to  find  readers  among  the  vulgo,  the  com- 
mon herd,  of  whose  brutez,  or  bestial  stupidity,  they 
habitually  spoke  in  a  very  high  and  mighty  fashion. 
This  attitude  of  superiority  was  not  peculiar  to  the 
learned  poets  of  Spain.  It  was  habitual  with  the 
school  of  Eonsard,  and  indeed  common  to  the  whole 
Eenaissance,  which  was  emphatically  scholarly  and 
aristocratic.  But  though  the  pretensions  of  Spain's 
learned  poets  were  not  different  from  those  of  the 
Italian,  the  Frenchman,  or  the  Englishman,  they  were 
less  fully  justified.  These  very  self-conscious  "  children 
of  the  Muses  "  were  not  so  superior  to  the  vulgar  herd 


THE  SPANISH  LEARNED  POETS.  35 

of  writers  of  romances  and  coplas  in  poetic  inspiration 
as  to  be  entitled  to  look  down  upon  them,  on  the 
strength  of  a  certain  mechanical  dexterity  acquired 
from  foreigners  by  imitation. 

The  question  what  exactly  it  was  that  the  innova- 
tors of  the  sixteenth  century  took  from  their  Italian 
.  rr  .  masters  is   easier   to   put  than  to  answer. 

I  Wlmt  was  * 

imitated  from  The  mere  imitation  of  Italian  models  was 
in  itself  no  novelty.     Cristobal  de  Castil- 


lejo  denied  the  claim  of  the  new  school  to  originality 
in  the  writing  of  hendecasyllabics.  They  had,  he 
said,  already  been  written  by  Juan  de  Mena.  So 
they  had,  and  by  Ausias  March  and  other  poets  of 
the  Catalan  school  also.  The  Marquess  of  Santillana 
had  written  sonnets  on  the  Petrarchian  model ;  the 
ottava  rima  and  tercets  were  not  unknown  to  the 
Court  school  of  Castile  or  to  the  Catalans.  The  can- 
zone had  been  written  in  Spain  by  imitators  of  the 
earlier  Italian  poetry.  What  then  remained  for  the 
innovators  to  take  ?  If  we  look  at  the  names  only, 
and  the  bare  skeleton  of  the  verse,  little  indeed ;  but 
when  the  manner  of  the  execution  is  considered,  a 
great  deal.  The  Italian  hendecasyllable,  which  the 
Spaniards  allowed  to  be  the  original  of  their  own 
line  of  eleven  syllables,  and  of  the  line  of  ten  with 
an  accent  on  the  final  syllable,  had  become  very 
monotonous  in  their  hands.  The  caesura  fell  with 
unvarying  regularity  after  the  fourth  syllable.  The 
innovators  learnt  to  vary  the  pause,  and  thereby  to 
give  a  new  melody  to  the  verse.  It  remained  to  them 
also  to  be  more  slavish  in  imitation  than  their  pre- 


36       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

decessors  had  been.  This  slavishness  was  shown  by 
its  technique  the  establishment  of  the  endecasilabo  piano, 
and  matter.  w^n  f-ne  unaccented  vowel  termination  as 
alone  legitimate.  Castilian  abounds  in  vocablos  agudos, 
in  masculine  rhymes,  and  was  not  under  the  same 
necessity  as  Italian  to  prefer  the  softer  form.  The 
Spanish  poets  were,  we  may  suppose,  influenced  by 
the  fact  that  the  accented  ending  had  become  associ- 
ated with  comic  verse  among  the  Italians,  and  yet 
by  submitting  to  a  limitation  which  was  not  justified 
by  the  genius  of  their  language,  they  began  by  im- 
poverishing their  poetic  vocabulary,  and  they  did  it 
in  pure  unintelligent  imitation.  The  restriction  was 
not  accepted  without  reluctance.  Kengifo,  who  is 
the  Spanish  Puttenham 1 — the  author,  that  is  to  say, 
of  the  standard  work  on  the  mechanism  of  verse 
written  in  Spain  in  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury— even  puts  in  a  plea  for  the  mrso  agitdo.  He 
had  good  authorities  to  support  him,  for  Garcilaso 
had  dared  to  end  a  line  with  the  word  vesti.  Boscan, 
who,  however,  is  not  accepted  by  the  Spaniards  as 
of  unimpeachable  authority,  had  been  so  left  to  him- 
self as  to  end  on  nacid,  while  Diego  de  Mendoza 
had  done  the  evil  thing  "  a  thousand  times."  Accord- 
ing to  the  stop-watch  of  the  new  school  this  was 
wrong,  and  all  three  were   duly  pilloried   for   their 

1  The  Arte  Po6tica  Espanola,  which  goes  under  the  name  of  Juan 
Diaz  Rengifo,  a  schoolmaster  of  Avila,  is  believed  to  have  been 
written  by  his  brother  Alfonso,  a  Jesuit.  With  the  addition  of  a 
dictionary  of  rhymes,  it  became  the  handbook  of  Spanish  poetasters, 
a  numerous  tribe.     It  appeared  at  Salamanca  in  1592. 


THE   SPANISH   LEARNED   POETS.  37 

offences  in  the  Egemplar  Portico — i.e.,  Ars  Poetica — 
of  Juan  da  la  Cueva. 1       ^^^^^ 

Yet  j  Juan  cle  la  Cueba  or  Cueva  (the  b  and  v, 
being  very  similar  in  Spanish  pronunciation,  were 
constantly  written  for  one  another  before  the  spel- 
ling was  fixed)  was  a  man  not  unworthy  of  atten- 
tion. His  life  is  covered  by  the  obscurity  common 
to  the  men  of  letters  of  the  time,  and  on  the  whole 
more  dense  in  Spain  than  elsewhere.  But  we  know 
that  he  lived  in  Seville  during  the  latter  half  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  His  Egemplar  PoStico,  though  not 
considered  as  above  reproach  in  form  by  Spanish 
critics,  undoubtedly  contains  the  orthodox  poetic 
creed  of  the  school,  and  is  therefore  of  authority. 
Nothing  is  more  striking  or,  when  the  future  of  poetry 
in  the  two  countries  is  considered,  more  significant, 
than  the  contrast  between  the  three  verse  epistles 
of  Don  Juan  de  la  Cueva,  and  the  Apologie  for  Poetrie 
of  Sir  Philip  Sidney.  The  PJgemplar  is  in  tercets,  and 
the  Apologie  in  fresh  youthful  prose ;  but  the  work  of 
the  Englishman  is  all  on  fire  with  the  very  soul  of 
poetic  feeling,  while  the  work  of  the  Spaniard  is  a 
cold  didactic  treatise  of  the  most  mechanical  kind. 
Sir  Philip  committed  himself  to  the  heresy  that  the 
essential  of  poetry  is  in  the  matter,  the  passion,  and 
the  intention,  while  the  verse  is  an  accident.  Don 
Juan  is  spotlessly  correct  on  the  one  point  on  which 
Sir  Philip  is  heterodox.  On  the  many  on  which  our 
countryman  goes  to  the  root  of  the  matter,  the  Sevil- 

1  The  Egemplar  Poetico  is  the  first  piece  quoted  in  vol.  viii.  of 
the  Parnaso  Espatiol  of  Seclauo,   1774. 


38       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

lian  is  worse  than  wrong.  He  drops  no  single  word 
to  show  that  he  thinks  them  worthy  of  consideration. 
A  few  general  platitudes  are  to  be  found  inculcating 
the  wisdom  of  consulting  your  genius,  the  excellence 
of  consistency  and  decency,  the  duty  of  despising  the 
profanum  vulgus,  the  folly  of  applying  the  metres  and 
language  proper  to  kings  and  great  persons  to  the 
doings  of  common  people.  Then  having  cleared  the 
way,  he  proceeds  to  the  things  really  of  necessity  for 
a  poet, — as  that  no  cancion  should  contain  more 
than  fifteen  stanzas ;  that  a  sestina  is  rhymed  a  b  c, 
cb  a,  and  that  its  lines  ought  to  end  in  nouns  and 
never  in  verbs ;  that  three  adjectives  are  more  than 
enough  for  any  substantive ;  that  an  agudo  at  the  end 
of  a  hendecasyllable  is  the  abomination  of  desolation ; 
that  the  letter  I  is  useful  for  sweetness  ;  that  r  comes 
in  with  good  effect  "  when  violent  Eurus  opposes  his 
rush  with  horrid  fury  to  powerful  Boreas  " ;  and  that 
s  suits  with  soft  sleep  and  savoury  repose  ("  al  blando 
sueno  y  al  sabroso  sosiego "),  for  he  did  not  scorn 
alliteration's  artful  aid. 

It  would  be  trivial  to  insist  on  the  Egemyplar  PoStico 
if  the  author  had  been  an  insignificant  man,  or  if 
the  bulk  of  Spanish  classic  poetry  showed  that  he 
spoke  only  for  himself.  But  Juan  do  la  Cueva  lias  an 
honourable  place  in  the  history  of  Spanish  dramatic 
literature  among  the  forerunners  of  Lope  de  Vega. 
When  he  comes  to  write  upon  the  comedy  he  rises 
at  once  above  the  level  of  mechanism  and  common- 
place. He  ceases  to  be  a  mere  schoolboy  to  the 
Italians,   and    roundly   vindicates    the    right    of    his 


THE  SPANISH  LEARNED  POETS.  39 

countrymen  to  reject  the  Senecan  model,  to  be  alive, 
^Spanish,  and  original  on  the  stage,  in  defiance  of  all 
the  rules  and  all  the  doctors.  The  theatre  was  to 
imitate  nature,  and  to  please.  Poetry  was  to  imitate 
the  Italians,  and  satisfy  the  orthodox  but  minute 
critic.  That  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  Juan  de  la 
Cueva's  teaching,  and  therein  lies  the  explanation  of 
the  impassable  gulf  which  separates  the  Spanish 
drama  —  a  very  genuine  thing  of  its  kind  —  from 
Spanish  classic  poetry — a  school  exercise,  redeemed. 
Irom  time  to  time  by  a  note  of  patriotism  or  of 
piety. 

When  poetry  is  approached  in  this  spirit  its  matter 

is    likely   to    be   as    merely   imitative    as    its    form. 

Spanish    classic    poetry    did    not    escape 

Artificiality  of        r  .  , 

the  work  of  the  this  fate,  and  there  is  only  too  much 
schooL  truth  in  the  taunt  of  "  sterile  abundance  " 

which  has  been  thrown  at  it.  We  meet  continually 
with  the  exasperating,  nameless,  characterless  shadow 
of  a  lady  whose  "  threads  of  gold  "  (which  the  rude  vul- 
gar call  her  hair)  cruel  hard  tyrant  Love  has  used  to 
enchain  the  lamenting  poet,  whose  sorrows  just  fill  the 
correct  number  of  stanzas.  The  pastoral  raged.  The 
same  Tirsis  and  the  same  Chloe  repeat  many  hundreds 
of  times  identical  things  in  a  landscape  which  has 
flowers  but  no  flower,  trees  but  no  tree,  and  is  withal 
most  manifestly  sham  in  arid,  rocky  Spain.  Sj3anish 
critics  have  complained  that  their  classic  poets  so  sel- 
dom touched  on  the  life  of  their  time, — but  that  is  a 
small  matter.  They  have — piety  and  patriotism  apart 
— little  human  reality  of  any  kind.     Love  according  to 


40       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

an  Italian  literary  pattern,  varied  by  platonism  learnt 
from  the  Florentines,  is  the  staple  subject.  Don 
Marcelino  Menendez,  the  most  learned  of  contempo- 
rary Spanish  critics,  has  said,  when  controverting 
Ticknor's  theory  that  the  Inquisition  was  accountable 
for  the  prevalence  of  Gongorism,  that  the  real  explan- 
ation of  that  disaster  lies  elsewhere.  Europe,  he  says, 
was  invaded  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries 
by  a  sham  middle  age  and  a  sham  antiquity,  which 
could  end  in  nothing  but  verbal  follies.  One  does  not 
recognise  the  truth  of  this  judgment  in  the  case  of 
France  and  England,  but  it  has  force  as  applied  to 
Spain. 

A  general  estimate  of  a  school  must  always  be  diffi- 
cult to  justify  except  by  a  profusion  of  quotation,  which 
is  impossible  here.  We  can  do  no  more  than  leave  it 
to  be  accepted  or  rejected  by  those  who  can  control  it 
by  a  knowledge  of  the  original,  and  proceed  to  give 
such  a  sketch  of  the  history  of  Spanish  classic  poetry 
as  our  limits  allow.1  It  falls  naturally  under  two 
heads — the  Lyric  and  the  Epic — and  in  both  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Italian  model  is  constant.  The  leading:  S 
form  in  lyric  poetry  is  the  cancion  in  hendecasyllables 
with  quebrados — that  is,  broken  lines  of  seven  syllables. 

1  This  seems  the  most  convenient  place  to  note  that  fairly  ample 
specimens  of  Spanish  literature  will  be  found  in  the  very  useful  collec- 
tion known  as  the  Bibliotecade  Aribau,  or  de  Ribadencyra — seventy- 
one  somewhat  ponderous  volumes  printed  with  middling  skill  on  poor 
paper.  The  texts  are  the  best  where  few  are  really  good,  and  the 
introductions  of  value.  It  is  well  indexed.  I  prefer  to  make  my 
references  to  this  rather  than  to  earlier  editions  or  better  edit  inns  pub- 
lished by  societies,  and  therefore  not  easily  accessible  in  this  country. 


THE  SPANISH  LEARNED  POETS.  41 

But  the  Epistola  in  tercets,  imitated  from  the  capitolo 
of  the  Italians,  is  very  common.  The  song  proper  is 
wholly  absent.  There  is  no  "  Come  unto  these  yellow 
sands,"  no  voice  of  Ariel  in  Spanish  poetry.  The 
Spaniard  does  not  sing ;  he  chants. 

Of  the  two  chiefs  of  the  school,  Boscan  ranks  mainly 
by  virtue  of  the  example  lie  set.  He  was  somewhat 
harshly  condemned  by  his  follower,  Her- 
rera,  for  hanging  jewels  robbed  from  the 
•classics  and  Italians  on  his  own  robe  of  frieze.  The 
charge  of  plagiarism  is  not  easily  rebutted,  for  Boscan 
certainly  took  his  goods  where  he  found  them  in  Virgil 
or  Horace.  As  for  the  quality  of  his  robe,  it  is  un- 
doubtedly of  the  nature;  of  frieze.  What  strikes  the 
reader  most  in  Boscan  is  a  certain  worldly  good  sense, 
more  like  our  own  Queen  Anne  men  than  the  poetry 
of  a  sixteenth-century  school  at  its  beginning.  His 
most  quoted  piece,  an  Epistola  addressed  to  Diego  de 
Mendoza,  is  eminently  rational  prose  disguised  in 
verse, ..  avowing  a  most  heterodox  affection  for  his 
wife  (his  whole  tone  to  women  is  thoroughly  modern), 
and  a  quite  unpoetic  liking  for  a  good  supper  by  a 
blazing  fire  of  logs  at  the  end  of  a  day  in  the  open 
air.  But  we  note  also  the  maturity  of  the  language, 
in  spite  of  a  certain  awkwardness  due  to  the  writer's 
want  of  skill.  This  same  premature  and  fatal  maturity 
is  even  more  conspicuous  in  Gurcilaso,  who  was  more 
master  of  his  pen.  In  the  small  body  of 
his  verse,  and  the  one  fragment  which 
remains  of  his  prose  —  a  letter  to  his  friend's  wife 
praising  her  good  taste  for  enjoying  the  Courtier  of 


42       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

Castiglione — there  is  hardly  a  word  or  phrase  which 
has  become  antiquated.  This  classic  poetry  was  born 
with  an  old  head  on  young  shoulders,  and  had  no 
youth.  His  finished  form  earned  and  kept  for  Gar- 
cilaso  the  rank  of  Prince  of  Castilian  poets.  In  the 
latter  part  of  the  century  he  was  twice  edited — once 
at  Salamanca  in  1577  by  the  Humanist,  Francisco 
Sanchez,  called,  from  the  name  of  his  native  town, 
Las  Brozas,  el  Brocense,  and  best  known  as  the 
author  of  the  Minerva;  and  then  at  Seville  by  Hernan 
de  Herrera.  The  edition  of  Herrera  has  a  commentary 
on  a  large  scale,  and  is  of  considerable  value  for  the 
history  of  Spanish  poetry;  but  it  set  an  example  which 
was  followed  to  an  excess  of  tiresome  pedantry  by  the 
editors  of  Gongora  and  Camoens.  It  led  to  a  famous 
and  not  unamusing  literary  quarrel.  The  Castilian 
critics,  who  were  banded  in  support  of  their  own  man, 
Sanchez,  fell  on  Herrera  with  some  justice  for  his 
inappropriate  display  of  scholastic  pedantry,  and  most 
unjustly  for  ignorance  of  Castilian.  No  Castilian 
will  ever  readily  allow  that  an  Andalusian  (which 
Herrera  was)  speaks  the  language  quite  correctly.  Of 
the  matter  of  Garcilaso's  verse  it  may  be  said  that  it 
is  pastoral,  or  gentlemanlike,  and  melancholy.  The 
Spaniard  finds,  no  doubt,  a  charm  in  the  mere  lan- 
guage, which  of  itself  is  enough ;  but  even  to  him  there 
may  be  suspected  to  be  some  tedium  in  this  obvious 
determination  to  get  a  stool  to  be  melancholy  on.  It 
is  not  the  melancholy  of  Jorge  Manrique,  who  is  sad- 
dened by  those  eternal  sorrows,  death  of  kin  and 
friends  and  the  burden  of  life,  but  the  melancholy  of 


THE   SPANISH   LKABNED   POETS.  43 

a  gentleman  who  is  imitating  a  model  to  pass  the 
time  in  winter  quarters.  But  the  so-called  Lira  or 
ode,  in  lines  of  seven  syllables  mixed  with  hendeca- 
syllabics,  addressed  "  To  the  flower  of  Gnidus "  is 
elegant.  It  is  in  stanzas  of  five  lines,  rhyming  the 
first  with  the  third,  the  second,  fourth,  and  fifth  to- 
gether, and  enforces  the  well-known  lesson,  "  Gather 
ye  rosebuds  while  ye  may,"  for  the  instruction  of  a 
young  lady  at  Naples  who  had  not  favoured  the  suit 
of  one  of  the  poet's  friends. 

Only  a  very  full  history  of  Spanish  literature  could 
afford  to  dwell  on  Ferdinand  de  Acuna  (Ferdinand, 
Fernando,  Fernan,  and  Hernan  are  all  forms  of  the 
same  name,  employed  according  to  taste  or  local 
usage),  who  was  a  Portuguese  noble  in  the  service 
of  Charles  V.,  a  soldier  of  distinction,  a  writer  of 
Castilian  verse,  and  a  copious  translator  from  the 
classics ;  or  G-utierre  de  Cetina;  a  soldier  best  known 
by  a  graceful  madrigal;1  or  many  others  whom  it 
would  be  a  barren  display  to  name;  but  Diego 
Hurtado  de  Mendoza  is  too  strong  a  man  to  be 
passed  in  a  crowd.  He  is  chiefly  famous  as  a  man  of 
action — as  a  soldier  who  governed  Siena  for  Charles 
V.,  and  a  diplomatist  who  represented  the  emperor 
in  a  very  military  fashion  at  the  Council  of  Trent. 
In  literature  he  ranks  chiefly  as  the  undoubted  author 

1  A  very  interesting  study  of  this  phase  of  Spanish  poetry,  and 
some  account  of  its  writers,  will  be  found  in  the  introduction  written 
by  M.  Alfred  Morel-Fatio-  to  his  reprint  of  a  Cancionero  General  of 
1535,  in  his  UEspagne  au  XVI1**.  ct  an  AT//""'.  Slede.  Heilbronn 
1878. 


44       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

of  a  history  of  the  revolt  of  the  Moriscoes,  and  as  the 
possible,  though  doubtful,  author  of  the  Lazarillo  de 
Tormes.  Diego  de  Mendoza  (1503  -  1575)  was  a 
younger  son  of  the  Count  of  Tendilla,  head  of  one 
of  the  many  titled  branches  of  his  famous  house — 
the  Douglases  of  Spain.  He  was  the  direct  descend- 
ant of  the  Marquess  of  Santillana,  and  through  him 
of  that  Lord  of  Butrago  who  sacrificed  his  life  for  the 
king  at  the  battle  of  Aljubarrota.1  His  poetry  was 
^  .  the  relaxation  of  a  great  noble  who  broke 

Their  ° 

immediate  through  the  rules  in  a  fashion  well  cal- 
culated to  horrify  such  critics  as  Juan  de 
la  Cueva.  But  Don  Diego  had  fire  enough  in  him 
to  burn  up  a  wilderness  of  correct  poets  of  that 
order.  Sometimes  it  flamed  out  with  little  regard  to 
decency.  But  in  happier  moments — as,  for  instance, 
in  the  ode  to  Cardinal  Espinosa — he  could  strike  that 
note  of  a  haughty,  or  even  arrogant  patriotism,  which 
is  the  finest  in  Spanish  poetry.  Even  in  his  case 
we  have  examples  of  the  same  premature  maturity 
noted  in  Boscan.  One  of  his  epistles  addressed  to 
this  very  writer  begins  by  the  Horatian  "Nil  admirari" 
— an  excellent  maxim,  perhaps,  but  chilling  in  the 
first  youth  of  a  poetry.  Mendoza  wrote  not  only  in 
the  Tuscan,  but  the  native  metres,  couplets,  and 
J  glosas.  The  glosa  is  a  favourite  exercise  of  verse- 
making  ingenuity  with  the  Spaniard.  It  consists  in 
taking  any  stanza  of  whatever  number  of  lines,  and 
building  on  it  a  poem  of  the  same  number  of  stanzas 

1  Pamaso  Uspanol   of   Sedafto,    vol.   vii. ;   and   Ribadeneyra,   vol. 
xxxii.;  PoetCU  Liricox  de  lot  Siglot,  xvi.,  xvii. 


THE   SPANISH   LEARNED   POETS.  45 

as  there  are  lines.     Each  must  end  in  one  of  the  lines 

of  the  foundation  stanza  taken  in  their  order.     They 

must  be  brought  in  without  violence,  and  the  whole 

must  be  a  variation  on  the  theme  of  the  stanza  quoted. 

Diego  de  Mendoza  outlived  Charles  V.,  and  spent  his 

last    years  in   exile   at   Granada,  incurred  by  a  too 

great  promptitude  in  resenting  impertinence  within 

the  precincts  of  the  Court. 

It  has  been  the  custom  to  divide  the  poets  of  Spain 

into  the  Castilian  and  the  Andalusian,  or  those  of 

,    ,    Salamanca  and  those  of  Seville.     The  divi- 
T/ie  two  schools 

of  Salamanca  sion  is  somewhat  arbitrary,  and  corresponds 
to  very  little  distinction  in  tone,  method, 
or  language  among  the  writers,  or  at  least  so  it  seems 
to  a  foreigner  who  compares  Luis  de  Leon  with  Her- 
nan  de  Herrera,  though  the  first  is  counted  as  the 
chief  of  the  school  of  Salamanca,  and  the  second  as 
the  chief  of  the  school  of  Seville.  Both  wrote  the 
same  fine  Castilian,  both  were  good  scholars,  and 
there  was  the  same  intense  religious  feeling,  the  same 
high  patriotism,  in  both.  /Luis  Ponce  de  Leon7(1528- 
1591),  as  if  to  show  how  artificial  this  distinction  is, 
was  born  at  Granada,  which  is  one  of  the  sub-king- 
doms of  Andalusia.1  He  was  an  Augustine  friar,  and 
occupied  two  important  chairs  in  succession  at  Sala- 
manca. Between  1572  and  1576  he  was  imprisoned 
by  the  Inquisition.  The  charge  made  against  him 
was  that  he  had  translated  the  Song  of  Solomon,  which, 

1  Biblioteca  de  Ribadeneyra,  vol.  xxxvii. ,  contains  the  work  of  Luis 
de  Leon,  both  prose  and  verse,  together  with  a  selection  from  the 
papers  of  his  trial  before  the  Inquisition. 


46       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

at  a  time  when  the  Beformers  were  making  an  active 
use  of  the  Bible  in  the  vernacular  tongues  against  the 
Church,  was  a  serious  offence.  The  leader  of  the 
attack  on  him  was  the  Dominican  Melchior  Cano;  of 
whose  De  Locis  Thcologicis  Dr  Johnson  wrote,  "  Nee 
admiror,  nee  multum  laudo."  It  is  a  well-known  story 
of  Luis  de  Leon  that  when  the  verdict  of  the  Holy  Office 
was  given  in  his  favour,  and  he  was  allowed  to  resume 
his  lectures,  he  began  where  he  had  left  off,  and  with 
the  words,  "As  we  were  saying  yesterday,  gentlemen." 
His  poetry  may  be  divided  into  that  part  which  is^ 
inspired  by  Horace,  and  that  which  is  inspired  by  the 
Bible.  It  is  perhaps  only  natural  that  he  should 
appear  to  more  advantage  when  he  is  paraphrasing 
the  description  of  a  perfect  wife  from  the  Proverbs 
of  Solomon  than  when  he  is  endeavouring  to  adapt 
the  lira  of  Garcilaso  to  some  theme  obviously  taken 
because  it  bore  a  certain  resemblance  to  the  subject 
of  one  of  the  odes  of  Horace.  These  imitations  of  the 
classic  models  were  not  confined  to  the  graver  and 
more  reflective  parts  of  his  originals.  Luis  de  Leon, 
though  a  churchman  of  undoubted  piety,  wrote  amatory 
poems.  The  coplas  in  the  old  Spanish  metres  called 
A  tina  Desdenosa — to  a  scornful  lady — are  on  exactly 
the  same  subject  as  the  already  named  Flor  de  Gnido 
of  Garcilaso.  Whether  he  was  following  the  classics 
and  learned  poets  of  his  own  country,  or  paraphrasing 
the  Psalms,  Luis  de  Leon  was  always  a  master  of  the 
very  purest  Castilian ;  while  his  reflective  poems— 
the  JVoche  Serena,  for  instance,  or  the  ode  which  imi- 
tates the  Beatus  Ille  of  Horace — are  something  more 


THE  SPANISH  LEARNED  POETS.  47 

than  mere  exercises  of  ingenuity.  It  was  his  repu- 
"tation  as  a  stylist  which  secured  the  publication  of  his 
poems  forty  years  after  his  death.  Luis  de  Leon 
himself  seems  to  have  considered  them  only  as 
amusements  for  his  leisure.  But  in  1631  Quevedo 
brought  out  the  first  edition,  in  order  to  counteract 
the  growing  taste  for  Gongorism. 

The  poet  who  has  the  honour  to  rank  as  a  stylist 
among  the  Spaniards,  next  to,  if  not  on  an  equality 
with  Garcilaso,  is  Hernan  de  Herrera  of  Seville  (1534- 
1597),  a  churchman  of  whose  life  almost  nothing  is 
known  with  certainty.1  As  usual,  he  published  little 
during  his  life,  and  much  of  his  manuscript  was  lost 
by  an  accident  after  his  death.  The  remainder  was 
published  by  his  friend  the  painter  Pacheco  in  1619. 
Spaniards,  if  asked  to  name  the  pieces  of  verse  in  their 
language  which  display  the  greatest  measure  of  force 
and  dignity,  would  certainly  quote  the  famous  odes  on 
the  battles  of  Lepanto  and  Alcazar  el-Quebir,  together 
with  the  sonnet  in  honour  of  Don  John  of  Austria. 
The  vigour  of  these  verses  is  unquestionable,  and  if  it 
cannot  be  claimed  for  them  that  they  display  any  great 
originality  of  form,  they  are  animated  by  a  fine  spirit 
of  patriotism.  Herrera,  too,  had  a  sense  of  the  merits 
of  compression,  which  is  not  common  with  his  country- 
men.    He  worked  at  the  language  in  an  artistic  spirit. 

Once  more,  as  in  the  case  of  the  immediate  followers 
of  Garcilaso,  we  must  pass  over  the  names  of  all  but 
the   chiefs    very    lightly.2      The    Aragonese    brothers 

1  Biblioteca  dc  2libadcnei/ra,  vol.  xxxii. 

2  The  reference  is  again  to  Ribadeneyra,  vols,  xxxii.,  xlii. 


48       EUROPEAN    LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

Lupercio  and  Bartolome  de  Argensola,  who  may  be 
classed  among  the  poets  of  Castile ;  Francisco  de 
Figueroa,  who  spent  nearly  all  his  life  in  Italy  ;  Bioja, 
the  poet  of  flowers,  and  the  author  of  a  moral  poem 
on  the  Euins  of  Italica  (a  Koman  colony  near  Seville), 
inspired  by  Joachim  du  Bellay;  Arguijo,  and  many 
others,  must  be  passed  over  in  silence.  It  is  proper  to 
note,  however,  that  whatever  anybody  else  was  doing 
at  this  time,  Lope  de  Vega  did  in  as  great  quantities 
as  men  who  did  nothing  else.  But  there  will  be 
occasion  to  speak  of  Lope  elsewhere.  For  the  present 
he  must  make  room  for  the  writer  whom  some  have 
claimed  as  the  most  genuine  lyric  poet  of  Spain,  and 
who  bears  the  discredit  of  having  flooded  the  literature 
of  his  country  with  a  ruinous  affectation. 
/  Don  Luis  de  Argote  y  Gongora,  who  habitually  used 
the  second  of  these  names,  which  was  his  mother's, 
c6ngoraand  was  a  Corclovese,  born  in  1561.1  He  was 
Gongorism.  educated  at  Salamanca,  followed  the  Court 
for  some  years,  and  was  attached  to  the  Duke '  of 
Lerma.  He  took  orders,  and  received  a  benefice  when 
advanced  in  life,  and  died  in  his  native  city  in  1627. 
His  evil  fame,  based  on  the  invention  of  the  particu- 
lar form  of  bad  literature  called  after  him  Gongor- 
ism, is  greater  than  his  good,  which  yet  has  some 
foundation.  His  romances  on  stories  of  captives 
among  Barbary  pirates,  and  of  wars  on  the  frontiers, 
are  among  the  best  of  their  kind.  Among  his  earlier 
poems  on  the  Tuscan  models  there  are  some  which 
possess  the  lyric  cry  with  a  degree  of  intensity  very 

1  Biblioteca  de  liibadencyra,  vol.  xxxii. 


THE   SPANISH   LEARNED   POETS.  49 

rare  among  the  Spaniards.  The  third  cancion,  for 
instance,  contains  a  singularly  passionate  and  admir- 
ably worded  variation,  on  the  theme  of  Shakespeare's 
forty-fourth  sonnet,  "  If  the  dull  substance  of  my  flesh 
were  thought."  But  it  was  not  for  this,  the  work  of 
his  earlier  years,  that  the  reputation  of  Gongora  has 
been  spread  over  the  world,  but  because  he,  to  steal  an 
image  from  Carlyle,  swings  in  chains  on  the  side  of 
Parnassus,  as  the  inventor  of  "El  Culteranismo "  or 
"  Gongorism."  At  some  period  in  his  life  he  began  to 
write  in  this  style.  Hostile  critics  say  he  did  so  be- 
cause he  could  not  attract  sufficient  attention  by 
writing  with  sanity.  Admirers  have  asserted  that 
he  had  a  literary  ambition  to  improve  the  poetic 
language  of  Spain,  to  make  it,  in  fact,  more  culto — 
more  cultivated.  The  question  what  exactly  Gongor- 
ism was,  will  be  best  answered  by  an  example.  Here, 
for  instance,  is  a  passage  from  the  Pyramus  and 
Thisbe,  a  short  poem,  published  in  1636  by  his  ad- 
mirer Cristobal  de  Salazar  Mardones,  with  a  wordy 
commentary  of  incredible  pomposity,  and  futility. 
The  English  translation  is  put  below  the  Spanish  on 
the  Hamiltonian  system,  and  the  reader  is  begged  to 
observe  that  the  inversions  and  transpositions  are  only 
a  little  more  violent  in  English  than  in  Spanish : — 

Piramo  fueron  y  Tisbe, 
Pyramus  they  were  and  Tisbe, 
Los  que  en  verso  hizo  culto 
Those  who  in  verse  made 1  polished 


1  "  Made  "  is  the  past  tense  of  the  verb.     The  order  is  "  made  to 
leave,"  which  is  shown  by  the  inflection  in  Spanish. 

D 


50        EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

El  Licenciado  Nason 
The  Licentiate  Naso 
Bien  romo  6  bien  narigudo 
Maybe  snub,  maybe  beak 
Dejar  el  dulce  candor 
To  leave  the  siveet  white 
Lastimosamente  obscuro 
Lamentably  dark 
Al  que,  tumulo  de  seda, 
Of  that  which,  tomb  of  silk, 
Fue  de  los  dos  casquilucios 
Was  of  the  tivo  feather-heads 
Moral  que  los  hospedd 
Mulberry  which  gave  them  shelter 
Y  fue  condenando  al  punto 
And  was  condemned  at  once 
Si  del  Tigris  no  en  raizes 
If  by  the  Tigris  not  in  root 
De  los  arnantes  en  frutos. 
By  the  lovers  in  fruit. 

Don  Cristobal  de  Salazar  Mardones  explains  in 
prose,  and  with  copious  references  to  Ovid,  Meta.,  lib. 
iv.,  that  what  this  means  is  that  the  mulberry -tree 
was  not  torn  up  by  the  roots  as  a  punishment  by  the 
Tigris,  but  was  coloured  by  the  blood  of  the  lovers. 
The  reader  will  see  at  once  that  this  is  puerile  non- 
sense, and  that  it  is  a  mere  trick.  It  is  also  a  very 
old  trick.  When  Thiodolf  of  Hvin,  whose  verse  rid- 
dles adorn  the  Hdmskringla,  wrote  of  a  certain  king — 

"  Now  hath  befallen 
In  Frodi'a  house 
The  word  of  fate 
To  fall  on  Fiolnir  ; 
That  the  windless  wave 
Of  the  wild  bull's  spears 
That  lord  should  <lo 
To  death  by  drowning," — 


THE  SPANISH  LEARNED  POETS.  51 

he  was  writing  in  "gongorina  especie" — that  is,  in 
what  was  to  be  the  manner  of  Gongora.  The  whole 
secret  lay,  as  Lope  de  Vega,  indeed,  pointed  out,  in 
never  calling  anything  by  its  right  name,  and  in 
transposing  words  violently.  Given  a  great  deal  of 
bad  taste,  and  a  puerile  mania  for  making  people 
stare,  and  the  thing  is  easily  accounted  for.  In  such 
conditions  it  may  be  thought  clever  to  call  mead 
which  men  drink  out  of  horns  "  the  windless  wave 
of  the  wild  bull's  spear,"  or  to  describe  a  mulberry- 
tree  as  a  tumulus  of  silk,  though  the  mistake  was 
incomparably  more  excusable  in  Thiodolf  of  Hvin 
than  in  Gongora,  and  the  Norseman  seems  on  the 
whole  to  have  been  the  least  silly  of  the  two.  The 
comparison  which  has  been  made  between  Gongorism 
and  our  own  metaphysical  school  is  too  favourable  to 
the  Spaniards,  in  whom  there  was  absolutely  nothing 
but  juggling  with  words. 

This  folly  spread  as  rapidly  as  the  imitation  of 
Italian  models  had  done.  It  was  in  vain  that  Lope 
argued  against  it  for  common-sense.  He  was  himself 
conquered.  Queveclo,1  who  attacked  it,  was  driven  to 
worse  straits,  for  he  endeavoured  to  resist  it  by  means 
of  another  affectation,  the  conccptista,  or  conceited 
style,  which  is  more  like  our  "  metaphysical "  manner, 
but  never  had  the  popularity  of  Gongorism.  The 
founder  of  this  school  of  affectation  was  Alonso  de 
Ledesma  of  Segovia  (1552-1623).  The  poems  which 
Quevedo  published  under  the  name  of  the  Bachiller 

1  Bibliotcca  de  Ribadencyra,  vols,  xxiii.,  xlviii.,  lxix.  There  is  a 
very  pretty  edition  of  Quevedo  in  eleven  octavo  volumes,  by  Sancha, 
Madrid,  1791,  which  is  occasionally  met  with. 


52       EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

Francisco  de  la  Torre  were  meant  to  reinforce  Luis 
de  Leon,  and  were  free  from  either  kind  of  fault ;  but 
the  learned  poetry  of  Spain  had  not  vitality  enough  to 
throw  off  the  disease.  Gongorism  became  the  literary 
taste  of  the  day,  and  was  soon  traceable  everywhere. 

The  great  mass  of  epics,  or  so-called  epics,1  which 
form  the  non-lyric  side  of  the  learned  poetry  of  Spain, 
belong  with  rare  exceptions,  if  not  with 
only  one  exception,  to  the  domains  of 
bibliography  and  curiosity.  I  have  to  confess  that 
I  do  not  speak  with  any  personal  knowledge  of  the 
Carolea  of  Hieronimo  Sempere,  published  in  1560,  or 
many  others,  and  with  only  a  slight  acquaintance 
with  the  Carlo  Famoso  of  Don  Luis  de  Zapata. 
This  second  poem,  published  in  1565,  is  in  50  cantos, 
and  contains  40,000  verses.  The  subject  is  the  history 
of  the  Emperor  Charles  V.,  and  it  may  stand  here  as  a 
specimen  of  the  whole  class  to  which  it  belongs.  The 
Carlo  Famoso  is  essentially  prose,  disguised  in  such 
ottava  rima  stanzas  as  any  one  who  had  once  acquired 
the  trick  could  probably  write  as  easily  as  prose  pure 
and  simple.  If  Don  Luis  de  Zapata,  who  had  served 
the  emperor,  had  been  content  to  tell  us  of  what  he  saw 
in  prose,  he  would  probably  have  left  a  readable,  and 
perhaps  a  valuable,  book.  But,  unfortunately,  lie  felt 
called  upon  to  build  the  lofty  rhyme,  in  imitation  of 
Ariosto,  and  this  brought  with  it  the  necessity  for 
supernatural   machinery,    which    the    Don    Luis    de 

1  Vols.  xvii.  and  xix.  of  the  Biblioteca  de  Ribadcneyra  contain  not 
only  all,  but  more  than  all,  that  i.s  entitled  to  survive  of  this  portion 
of  Spanish  literature. 


THE  SPANISH  LEARNED  POETS.         53 

Zapatas  of  all  countries  are  very  ill  qualified  to 
handle.  The  ease  with  which  verses  of  a  kind  are 
written  in  Spanish,  the  influence  of  a  fashionable 
model,  and  the  prestige  attaching  to  the  writing  of 
verse,  led  to  the  production  of  innumerable  volumes 
on  historical  subjects  of  what  would  fain  have  been 
poetry  if  it  could.  Some  of  this  mass  of  writing  is  not 
without  merit,  the  Elegies  of  Famous  Men  of  the  Indies 
— Elegias  de  Varones  Ilustres  de  Indicts — of  Juan  de 
Castellanos1  is  readable  enough,  and  has  some  his- 
torical value.  Juan  de  Castellanos,  whose  dates  of 
birth  and  death  are  unknown,  was  an  old  soldier 
turned  priest,  who  in  common  with  many  others 
could  in  a  fashion  write  ottava  rima  stanza.  He 
seems  to  have  thought  that  "  Elegy  "  meant  much  the 
same  thing  as  "  Eulogy,"  and  his  Elegias  are,  in  fact, 
a  history  of  the  conquest  of  America  by  the  Spaniards, 
carried  down  to  1588.  It  is  only  a  fragment,  but 
even  so,  it  fills  a  crown  octavo  volume  of  563  pages  in 
double  columns.  Of  course  there  are  by  the  side  of 
work  of  this  kind  imitations  of  the  Italian  epic  serious 
or  humorous,  which  have  no  pretensions  to  a  histori- 
cal character.  Here  it  was  only  to  be  expected  that 
Lope  de  Vega  would  be  among  the  most  fluent  and 
the  most  conspicuous,  for  it  may  be  repeated  that  he 
tried  his  hand  at  whatever  others  were  doing.  The 
epics  in  the  Italian  form  being  popular,  he  wrote 
several ;  and  as  he  had  an  unparallelled  command  of 
facile  verse  which  always  stopped  short  of  becoming 
bad,  he  is  never  anreadable,  though,  as  he  was  also  only 

1  Biblioteca  de  Ribadeneyra,  vol.  iv. 


54       EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

a  very  superior  improvisatore,  his  poems  never  quite 
compel  reading.  The  subject  of  the  Dragontea — the  last 
cruise  and  death  of  Sir  Francis  Drake  in  1594 — is  so 
much  more  attractive  to  an  Englishman  than  the 
Angelicas  and  Jerusalem  Conquistaclas,  taken  from 
Ariosto  and  Tasso,  that  one  is  perhaps  prejudiced  in 
its  favour.  And  yet  it  seems  to  me  to  have  a  certain 
vitality  not  present  in  the  rest,  and  to  be  by  no  means 
inferior  to  them  in  other  respects.1 

The  partiality  of  his  countrymen  and  the  too  good- 
natured  acquiescence  of  foreigners  have  given  the  name 
of   epic   to   the   Araucana   of    Alonso   de 

The  Araucana. 

Ercilla.  The  author  was  a  very  typical 
Spaniard  of  his  century.  He  was  born  in  1533,  and 
came  to  England  as  page  to  Philip  of  Spain  at  the 
time  of  his  marriage  with  Mary  Tudor.  It  was  from 
England  that  he  sailed  to  Chili  for  the  purpose 
of  helping  in  the  suppression  of  the  revolt  of  the 
Araucans,  which  became  the  subject  of  his  poem. 
While  on  service  he  was  condemned  to  death  for 
drawing  his  sword  on  a  brother  officer.  The  sentence 
was  remitted,  but  Ercilla  resented  it  so  bitterly  that 
he  entirely  omitted  the  name  of  his  general,  the 
Marquis  of  Cafiete,  in  his  poem.  He  returned  to 
Spain  in  15G5,  and  passed  the  remainder  of  his  life, 
until  his  end  in  1595,  partly  in  endeavouring  to 
secure  a  reward  from  the  king  for  his  services,  and 
partly  in  compiling  his  great  Araucana.     It  appeared 

1  Biblioteca   de   Ribadeneyra.      Obras   no   drainalicas   de  Lope  dt 
Vega;  also.  Obras  ttucltits.     Madrid,  1776-1779. 

2  Biblioteca  de  Ribadeneyra,  vol.  xvii. 


THE   SPANISH   LEARNED   POETS.  55 

in  three  parts  in  1569,  1575,  and  1590.  The  story 
told  by  himself,  that  he  wrote  it  on  pieces  of  leather 
and  scraps  of  paper  during  his  campaign,  applies, 
therefore,  only  to  the  first  part.  It  is  only  by  a 
figure  of  speech  that  the  Araucana  can  be  described 
as  an  epic.  Ercilla  said  that  he  found  courage  to 
print  it  because  it  was  a  true  history  of  wars  he  had 
seen  for  himself.  The  first  part  is  almost  wholly 
occupied  with  the  skirmishes  of  the  Araucan  war.  In 
the  later  parts  he  was  tempted  to  provide  a  proper 
epic  machinery,  but  the  change  is  only  a  proof  of  the 
tyranny  of  a  fashion.  Ercilla  was  a  good  handicrafts- 
man of  ottava  rima  stanzas,  he  wrote  very  fine  Cas- 
tilian,  and  his  poem  has  unquestionable  vitality. 
Yet  it  is,  after  all,  hybrid.  At  its  best  it  is  a  superior 
version  of  the  Varones  Ilustres  of  Castellanos,  at  its 
weakest  an  echo  of  the  Italians.  The  literature  of  the 
world  would  have  been  richer,  not  poorer,  if  Ercilla 
had  written  memoirs  on  the  model  of  his  French  con- 
temporary Monluc. 

The  Italian  influence  which  produced  the  learned 
poetry  of  Spain  had  its  effect  on  Portugal  also.  The 
Portuguese  remember  Francisco  de  Sa  de  Miranda 
(1495-1558)  as  the  first  who  began  to  shape  their 
language  for  literary  purposes,  and  the  work  was 
continued  by  Antonio  Ferreira  and  Pedro  de  Andrade 
Caminha,  his  younger  contemporaries  and  followers. 
My  own  knowledge  of  these  writers  is  small,  but  as 
far  as  it  goes  it  leads  me  to  believe  that  Southey's 
sound  literary  judgment  had  as  usual  led  him  right 
when  he  said  that,  "They  rendered  essential  service 


56       EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

to  the  language  of  their  country,  and  upon  that 
their  claims  to  remembrance  must  rest." l  They  are 
interesting  in  fact  as  examples  of  a  general  literary 
movement  which  started  in  Italy,  and  prevailed  over 
all  Western  Europe.  Southey  did  not  note,  and 
Portuguese  writers  have  naturally  not  been  forward 
to  confess,  how  near  Portugal  came  to  having  no 
modern  literature  in  her  own  tongue.  One  of  the 
two  founders  of  the  Spanish  Italianate  school  was  a 
Catalan  who  left  the  tongue  of  Muntaner  and  Ausias 
March  to  write  Castilian.  Had  the  political  union  of 
Spain  and  Portugal  been  a  little  closer,  it  is  very 
possible  that  Portuguese  would  have  shared  the  fate 
of  Catalan.  It  would  not  have  ceased  to  be  spoken, 
but  it  would  no  longer  have  been  the  language  of 
government  and  literature.  Even  as  it  was,  Castilian 
had  in  Portugal  something  of  the  pre-eminence  which 
medieval  Erench  had  had  among  neighbouring  peoples. 
Portuguese  who  wrote  their  own  tongue  also  wrote 
Castilian — even  Camoens  is  in  the  list  of  those  who 
used  both  languages.  But  the  unity  of  the  Peninsula 
was  destined  never  to  be  completed,  and  Portuguese 
has  escaped  falling  into  the  position  of  a  dialect. 
Before  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century  it  was 
illustrated  by  a  poem  which  has  at  any  rate  "  a  world- 
wide reputation." 

It  becomes  the  critic  and  historian  of  literature  to 

approach  works  of  great  fame,  which  he 

cannot  himself  regard  with  a  high  degree 

of  admiration,  in  a  spirit  of  diffidence,   or  even  of 

1  Article  on  Portuguese  Literature  in  the  QuarUrl/y  for  May  1809. 


THE   SPANISH   LEARNED   POETS.  57 

humility.  I  have  to  confess  my  own  inability  to  feel 
the  admiration  other,  and  no  doubt  better,  judges 
have  felt  for  the  Lusiads}  The  pathetic  circum- 
stances of  the  life  of  the  author,  Luiz  da  Camoens 
(1524  ?  - 1580),  are  well  known,  and  have  perhaps 
served  to  prejudice  the  reader  in  favour  of  the 
poem.  He  was  a  Portuguese  gentleman  who  served 
in  the  East  Indies,  who  was  ruined  by  shipwreck, 
and  who  ended  his  life  in  extreme  misery  in  Lisbon. 
The  foundation  of  the  Lusiads  is  supplied  by  the 
famous  voyage  of  Vasco  da  Gama  round  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope ;  but  Camoens  has  worked  in  a  great  deal 
from  Portuguese  history,  and  the  epic  is  written  in 
honour  of  the  people,  not  of  the  navigator.  The 
matter  is  noble,  but  the  execution  is  (of  course  I 
speak  under  correction)  feeble.  The  merit  of  epic 
completeness  and  proportion  which  has  been  claimed 
for  the  Lusiads  is  not  great  in  a  writer  who  had 
Virgil  to  copy,  and  to  whom  the  voyage  of  Gama 
supplied  a  coherent  narrative,  if  not  exactly  a  plot. 
It  cannot  be  denied — and  no  one  need  wish  to  deny 
— that  Camoens  wrote  his  own  language  with  great 
purity,  and  with  that  softness  bordering,  and  some- 
times more  than  bordering,  on  the  namby-pamby, 
which  the  Portuguese  love.  He  has  a  real  tender- 
ness, and  a  fine  emotional  sentimentality,  while  his 
patriotism  is  undeniable.  But  in  spite  of  these 
merits,   which    at   the   best    are    fitter    for   the    lyric 

1  The  general  reader  cannot  do  better  than  make  his  acquaintance 
with  the  Lusiads  in  Mr  Aubertin's  translation,  which  gives  the 
Portuguese  text  opposite  the  English  version. 


58       EUROPEAN  LITERATURE— LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

than  the  scope  of  the  epic,  the  Lusiads  suffer  from 
the  fatal  defects  of  prolixity  and  commonplace,  both 
in  language  and  thought.  The  supernatural  machinery 
is  an  example  of  childish  imitation.  Camoens  has 
introduced  the  heathen  mythology  together  with  the 
sacred  names  of  his  own  religion.  The  Portuguese- 
poet  had  many  precedents  for  the  combination,  but 
he  is  not  strong  enough  to  make  us  endure  its  essen- 
tial absurdity.  The  Lusiads  has,  in  fact,  the  defect  of 
all  the  learned  poetry  of  the  Peninsula — that  it  is 
very  much  of  a  school  exercise.  He  saw  his  heathen 
gods  and  goddesses  in  Virgil,  and  transferred  them 
bodily  to  his  own  Christian  poem,  not  because  they 
had  any  fit  place  there,  but  because  they  were  or- 
dered to  be  provided  in  the  "  receipt  for  making  an 
epic  poem."1 

The  reader  who  compares  the  Lusiads,  not  with  the 
Faerie  Queen,  which  belongs  to  a  very  different  man- 
sion in  the  house  of  literature,  but  with  the  master- 
pieces of  the  class  to  which  it  really  belongs,  the 
purely  literary  epic,  done  by  an  accomplished  writer 
according  to  rule,  is,  it  may  be,  liable  to  be  rendered 
impatient  by  the  loud  calls  made  on  him  for  extreme 

1  Whether  because  the  subject  is  maritime,  or  in  consequence  of 
our  long  trading  and  fighting  alliance  with  Portugal,  the  Lusiads  has 
been  translated  into  English  with  an  almost  curious  persistence.  Sir 
Richard  Fanshawe  made  a  very  quaint  version  in  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  The  flowing,  and  extremely  free,  translation  of 
Mickle  proved  lucrative  to  its  author  as  late  as  1776.  In  our  time 
Mr  Aubertin  has  translated  it  closely,  and  Sir  Richard  Burton  has 
given  a  version  both  of  the  Lusiads  and  of  the  minor  poems  which  is 
admirably  Titled  to  introduce  the  English  reader — to  the  translator. 


THE  SPANISH  LEARNED   POETS.  59 

admiration.  He  finds  stanza  following  stanza  of 
smooth,  but  somewhat  nerveless,  ottava  rima,  full  of 
matter  which  might  equally  well  be  expressed  in 
prose,  and  would  not  then  appear  to  differ  essentially 
from  much  of  Hakluyt's  voyages.  Now  and  then  he 
will  find  incidents  —  the  vision  of  the  Spirit  of  the 
Cape,  for  example,  and  the  episode  of  the  island  of 
Love — where  the  intention  to  be  poetical  is  visible 
enough,  but  which  do  not  come  of  necessity,  and  have 
no  consequences.  A  tender  lyric  spirit  there  is,  and 
that  is  what  is  most  truly  poetical  and  genuine  in 
Camoens.  And  of  that  again  there  are  better  and 
more  spontaneous  examples  in  his  sonnets.  On  the 
whole,  one  has  to  come  to  the  conclusion  that  he  was 
a  real  poet,  though  of  no  wide  scope,  who  could  ex- 
press a  certain  tenderness  and  melancholy  in  forms  he 
had  learnt  from  the  Italians,  but  who  owes  his  great 
name  mainly  to  the  fact  that  he  is  the  only  man  his 
country  can  quote  as  worthy  to  rank  with  the  great 
poets  of  the  world.  Therefore  he  has  a  whole 
nation  to  sing  his  praise,  and  nobody  is  concerned 
to  contradict.1 

1  Obras  de  Camoens.     Lisbon,  1782-1783. 


60 


CHAPTEE  III. 

THE  GROWTH  AND  DECADENCE  OF  THE 
SPANISH  DRAMA. 

THE  NATIONAL  CHARACTER  OF  THE  SPANISH  DRAMA — THE  FIRST  BEGIN- 
NINGS OF  THE  RELIGIOUS  PLATS  —  THE  STARTING-POINT  OF  THE 
SECULAR  PLAY — BARTOLOMF,  DE  TORRES  NAHARRO — LOPE  DE  RUEDA 
— LOPE  DE  VEGA'S  LIFE — HIS  INFLUENCE  ON  THE  DRAMA — THE  CON- 
DITIONS OF  THE  WORK — CONTEMPORARIES  AND  FOLLOWERS  OF  LOPE 
— CALDERON — CALDERON's   SCHOOL. 

The  dramatic  literature  of  Spain  was,  like  our  own, 

purely  national.     The  classic  stage  had  no  influence 

on  it  whatever ;  the  contemporary  theatre 

The  national 


character  of  the  of  Italy  very  little,  and  only  for  a  brief 

Spanish  drama.  ^^  ^  ^    ^^  ^^       ^^  ^^  ^ 

Spain  translators  both  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  dram- 
atic literature,  while  her  scholars  were  no  less  ready 
than  others  to  impress  on  the  world  the  duty  of  fol- 
lowing the  famous  rules  of  Aristotle.  But  neither  the 
beauty  of  the  classic  models,  nor  the  lessons  of  scholars, 
nor  even  the  authority  of  Aristotle — though  it  was 
certainly  not  less  regarded  in  the  last  country  which 
clung  to  the  scholastic  philosophy  than  elsewhere — 


THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  61 

had  any  effect.  It  would  be  too  much  to  say  that  they 
were  wholly  neglected.  Spanish  dramatic  writers 
were,  on  the  contrary,  in  the  habit  of  speaking  of  them 
with  profound  respect.  Cervantes,  in  a  well-known 
passage  of  Don  Quixote,  reproaches  his  countrymen  for 
their  neglect  of  the  three  unities ;  and  Lope  de  Vega, 
who  more  than  any  other  man  helped  to  fix  the  Span- 
ish comedy  in  its  disregard  of  the  unities  of  time  and 
place,  and  its  habitual  contempt  for  the  rules  that  the 
comic  and  tragic  should  never  be  mingled  in  one  piece, 
or  that  great  personages  should  never  be  brought  on 
except  with  a  due  regard  to  their  dignity,  avowed  that 
he  saw  what  was  right,  and  confessed  its  excellence. 
He  even  boasted  that  he  had  written  no  less  than  six 
orthodox  plays.  But  Cervantes,  in  the  little  he  wrote 
for  the  stage,  never  made  his  practice  even  approach 
his  precept,  while  nobody  has  ever  been  able  to  find  of 
which  of  his  plays  Lope  was  speaking  when  he  said 
that  he  had  observed  the  unities.  It  has  even  been 
supposed  that  when  he  made  the  boast,  he  was  laughing 
at  the  gentlemen  to  whom  he  addressed  his  Arte  Nuevo 
de  Haccr  Comedias  (New  Art  of  Writing  Comedies). 
Not  a  little  ingenuity  has  been  wasted  in  attempts  to 
discover  what  both  meant.  The  good  sense  of  Don 
Marcelino  Menendez 1  has  found  by  far  the  most  ac- 
ceptable explanation  of  the  mystery,  and  it  is  this, — 
that  Cervantes,  Lope,  and  their  contemporaries  had  a 
quite  sincere  theoretical  admiration  for  the  precepts  of 
Aristotle,  or  what  were  taken  to  be  such  by  the  com- 
mentators, but  that  in  practice  they  obeyed  their  own 

1  llistoria  de  las  Ideas  Esteticas  en  Espana. 


62       EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

impulses,  and  the  popular  will,  though  not  without  a 
certain  shamefaced  consciousness  that  it  was  rather 
wicked  in  them.  Spanish  dramatists,  in  fact,  treated 
the  orthodox  literary  doctrine  very  much  as  the 
ancient  Cortes  of  Castile  were  wont  to  treat  the  un- 
constitutional orders  of  kings, — they  voted  that  these 
injunctions  were  to  be  obeyed  and  not  executed — "  obe- 
dicidas  y  no  cumplidas,"  thereby  reconciling  independ- 
ence with  a  respectful  attitude  towards  authority. 
Some  were  bold  enough  to  say  from  the  first  that  the 
end  of  comedy  was  to  imitate  life,  and  that  their  imi- 
tation was  as  legitimate  as  the  Greek.  This  finally 
became  as  fully  established  in  theory  as  it  always  had 
been  in  practice.  Nothing  is  more  striking  than  the 
contrast  between  the  slavishness  of  Spanish  learned 
poetry  and  the  vigorous  independence  of  the  native 
stage. 

There  was  little  in  the  mediaeval  literature  of  Spain 

to  give  promise  of  its  drama  of  the  later  sixteenth  and 

.    .      earlier   seventeenth   centuries.      Spaniards 

The  first  begin-  r 

ningso/thc  had  mysteries,  and  they  dramatised  the 
lessons  of  the  Church  as  other  nations 
did ;  but  they  had  less  of  this  than  most  of  their 
neighbours,  and  very  much  less  than  the  French.  In 
the  earlier  years  of  the  sixteenth  century  there  was  a 
perceptible  French  influence  at  work  in  Spain.1  The 
San  Martinho  of  Gil  Vicente,  a  Portuguese,  who  wrote 

1  Autos  Sacramentalcs  in Bibl'iotcca  de  Rlbadeneyra.  The  introduc- 
tion by  Don  Eduardo  Gonzalez  Pedroso  gives  the  early  history  of 
these  religious  plays  in  Spain,  but  with  scarcely  sufficient  recognition 
of  the  fact  that  they  were  common  to  all  western  Europe. 


THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  63 

both  in  his  native  tongue  and  in  Castilian,  is  a  moral 
play  like  many  in  mediaeval  French  literature.  It  is 
on  the  well-known  story  of  Saint  Martin  and  the 
beggar,  is  written  in  flowing  verse,  and  breaks  off 
abruptly  with  a  note  that  the  performers  must  end 
with  psalms,  for  he  had  been  asked  to  write  very  late, 
and  had  no  time  to  finish.  The  Farsa  del  Sacramento 
de  Peralforja,  which,  from  a  reference  to  the  spread  of 
the  Lutheran  heresy,  seems  to  belong  to  the  years 
about  1520,  betrays  a  French  model  by  its  very  title. 
Farce  had  not  the  meaning  it  acquired  later.  The 
personages  are  Labour,  Peralforja,  his  son,  Teresa 
Jugon,  Peralforja's  sweetheart,  the  Church,  and  Holy 
Writ  The  subjects  are  the  foolish  leniency  of  Labour 
to  his  son,  and  its  deplorable  effects  (a  favourite  theme 
with  French  writers  of  /arses  and  moralities),  the 
sorrows  of  the  Church,  who  is  consoled  by  Holy 
Writ.  These  two  rebuke  Labour  for  his  weakness,  and 
induce  Peralforja  to  amend  his  ways.  There  is  nothing 
here  particularly  Spanish — nothing  which  might  not 
be  direct  translation  from  the  French.  The  religious 
play  was  destined  to  have  a  history  of  its  own  in 
Spain ;  but  its  earlier  stage  is  marked  by  little  national 
character.  Even  the  Oveja  Perdida  (the  Lost  Sheep), 
written,  or  at  least  revised  and  recast,  by  Juan  de 
Timoneda  about  1570,  which  long  remained  a  stock 
piece  with  the  strolling  players,  is  a  morality  on  the 
universal  mediaeval  model.  The  Lost  Sheep  is  of 
course  the  human  soul,  led  astray  by  carnal  appetite, 
and  rescued  by  Christ  the  Good  Shepherd.  The  other 
characters  are  Saint  Peter,  the  Archangel  Michael,  and 


64       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

the  Guardian  Angel.  Except  that  it  has  an  elaborate 
introduction,  divided  between  an  Introit  to  Ribera,  the 
Patriarch  of  Antioch  and  Archbishop  of  Valencia,  be- 
fore whom  it  was  played,  and  an  Introit  to  the  people, 
it  does  not  differ  from  the  San  Martinho  or  the  Farsa 
Sacramental  de  Peralforja. 

It  has  been  customary  to  treat  the  Celestina  as  the 
foundation,  or  at  least  an  important  part  of  the  foun- 
dations, of  the  Spanish  secular  drama.  This  curious 
story  in  dialogue  is  indeed  called  a  "  tragi-comedy," 
and  it  most  unquestionably  proves  that  its  author,  or 
authors,  possessed  the  command  of  a  prose  style  ad- 
mirably adapted  for  the  purposes  of  comedy.  But  the 
Spanish  is  a  poetic,  not  a  prose  drama.  The  qualities 
which  redeem  the  somewhat  commonplace  love-story 
of  Calisto  and  Meliboea,  and  the  tiresome  pedantry  of 
much  of  the  Celestina,  its  realism,  and  its  vivacious 
representation  of  low  life  and  character,  are  seldom 
found  on  the  Spanish  stage.  We  shall  do  better 
to  look  for  the  starting  -  point  of  the  comedy  of 
Lope  de  Vega  in  the  Eelogas  of  Juan  del  Enema, 
who  has  been  already  mentioned  as  one  of  the 
last  lights  of  the  troubadour  school.1  The  model 
here  is  obviously  the  little  religious  play  of  the 
stamp  of  Vicente's  San  Martinho,  modified  by  imitation 

1  An  accessible  and  still  most  useful  account  of  the  early  Spanish 
drama  is  to  be  found  in  the  first  volume  of  Ochoa's  Tesoro  del  Tcatro 
Espanol,  which  gives  the  introduction  and  catalogue  of  Don  Leandro 
de  Moratin,  Paris,  1836  ;  but  the  standard  authority  is  Schack's 
Geschichte  dcr  Dramatischen  Literatur  und  Kunst  in  Spanien,  Berlin, 
1845-46.  Yet,  here  and  always,  the  English  reader  cannot  do  better 
than  follow  Mr  Ticknor. 


THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  65 

of   the   classic   Eclogue.      The  personages,  generally 
shepherds,    are    few,    the    action    of    the 

The  starting-  x 

Voi,it  of  the  simplest,  and  the  verse  somewhat  infantile, 
arp  y'  though  not  without  charm.  Yet  the  mere 
fact  that  we  have  in  them  examples  of  an  attempt  to 
make  characters  and  subjects,  other  than  religious, 
matter  of  dramatic  representation,  shows  that  they 
were  an  innovation  and  a  beginning.  Juan  del 
Encina,  who  was  attached  in  some  capacity  to  the 
Duke  of  Alva  of  his  time,  wrote  these  Eclogues  to 
be  repeated  for  the  amusement  of  his  patrons  by  their 
servants.  It  does  not  appear  that  they  were  played 
in  the  market-place,  or  were  very  popular.  During 
the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  Church 
endeavoured  to  repress  the  secular  play.  The 
struggle  was  useless,  for  the  bent  of  the  nation 
was  too  strong  to  be  resisted.  It  conquered  the 
Church,  which,  before  the  end  of  the  century,  found 
itself  unable  to  prevent  the  performance  of  very  mun- 
dane dramas  within  the  walls  of  religious  houses.  Yet 
for  a  time  the  Inquisition  was  able  to  repress  the 
growth  of  a  non-religious  drama  at  home.  The 
working  of  the  national  passion  for  the  stage,  and 
for  something  other  than  pious  farsas,  is  shown  in  the 
Josefina 1  of  Micael  de  CarvajaL  This  long-forgotten 
work,  by  an  author  of  whom  nearly  nothing  is  really 
known,  was  performed  apparently  for,  and  by,  ecclesi- 
astics at  Valencia  about  1520.  It  is  on  the  subject  of 
Joseph  and  his  Brethren,  is  a  religious  play,  but  has 
divisions,  and  a  machinery  obviously  adapted  from  the 

1  Published  by  the  Sociedad  de  Biblidfilos  Espanoles,  1870. 
E 


66       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

Latin,  if  not  the  Greek  model.  There  are  four  acts, 
a  herald  who  delivers  a  prologue  to  the  first,  second, 
and  third,  a  chorus  of  maidens  at  the  end  of  each. 
The  dialogue  has  life,  and  there  is  a  not  unsuccessful 
attempt  at  characterisation  in  the  parts  of  the  brothers 
and  of  Potiphar's  wife.  At  the  close  comes  the 
Jvillancico,  a  simple  form  of  song  hovering  towards 
being  a  hymn,  which  was  obligatory  at  the  close  of  the 
religious  play.  The  Josefina  had  no  progeny,  and  is 
to-day  mainly  interesting  as  an  indication  of  the 
struggle  of  the  national  genius  to  find  its  true  path. 
We  cannot  say  even  that  of  the  few  direct  imitations 
of  the  classic  form  produced  by  the  Spaniards.  Such 
works  as  the  Nise  Zastimosa — the  Pitiable  Agnes — a 
strictly  Senecan  play  on  the  story  of  Ines  de  Castro, 
first  written  in  Portuguese  by  Perreira,  and  then  adap- 
ted into  Castilian  by  Geronimo  Bermudez,  a  learned 
churchman,  and  printed  in  1577,  are  simply  literary 
exercises.  They  show  that  the  influences  which  in- 
spired Jodelle,  and  Gamier  in  Prance,  were  not  un- 
felt  in  Spain ;  but  there,  as  in  England,  the  national 
genius  would  have  none  of  them.  In  Bermudez  him- 
self the  imitation  of  Seneca  was  forced.  The  Nise 
Zastimosa  has  a  continuation  called  the  Nise  Laure- 
ada.  The  first,  which  ends  with  the  murder  of  Agnes, 
is  correct;  but  in  the  second,  which  has  for  subject 
the  vengeance  of  the  king,  he  throws  aside  the  un- 
congenial apparatus  of  messenger  and  chorus,  and 
plunges  into  horrors,  to  which  the  story  certainly  lent 
itself,  with  the  zest  of  his  contemporary  Cristobal  de 
Virues,  or  our  own  Kyd. 


THE   SPANISH   DllAMA.  67 

The  true  successors  of  Juan  del  Enema  were  to  be 

found  during  the  reign  of  Charles  V.  in  the  Spanish 

colony  at  Eome.     The  Spanish  proverb  has 

Bartolome  de  J  r  r 

Torres  it  that  the  Devil  stands  behind  the  cross — 

NaMrro.  „  ^     ^     ^^    ^    ^    diablo  »  _  and     fche 

Spaniards  who  lived  under  the  shadow  of  the  papal 
Court  enjoyed  a  licence  which  they  would  have  missed 
under  the  eye  of  the  Inquisition.  One  of  them,  Bar- 
tolome de  Torres  Naharro,  who  lived  and  wrote  in 
the  early  years  of  the  century,  is  sometimes  counted 
the  father  of  the  Spanish  stage.  He  was  the  author 
of  a  number  of  comedies,  published  in  Seville  in  1520 
under  the  title  of  Propaladia,  which  deal  with  the 
favourite  subjects  of  comedy,  love  intrigues,  and  the 
tricks  of  lovers,  rufianes — i.e.,  bullies — soldiers  in  and 
out  of  service,  and  so  forth,  types  which  he  had  many 
chances  of  observing  at  Eome  when  all  Italy  was 
swarming  with  Spanish  bisoJios,  the  wandering  fight- 
ing men  who  were  mercenaries  when  any  prince  would 
employ  them,  and  vagabonds  at  other  times.  Naharro 
had  considerable  vis  comica,  and  a  command  of  telling 
fluent  verse.  His  personages  have  life,  and  if  his 
plays  have  touches  of  obscenity,  which  is  not  common 
in  Spain,  and  brutality,  which  is  less  rare,  his  time 
must  be  taken  into  account.  But  Naharro,  though  a 
genuine  Spaniard,  lived  too  near  the  Italians  not  to  be 
influenced  by  Machiavelli  and  Ariosto.  His  plays 
mark  only  a  short  step  forward  to  the  fully  developed 
comedy  of  Lope.  The  Propaladia  was  soon  suppressed 
by  the  Inquisition,  not  because  it  contained  heresy, 
but  for  a  freedom  of  language  in  regard  to  ecclesi- 


68        EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

astical  vices  which  would  have  passed  unrebuked  in 
the  previous  century,  hut  had  become  of  very  bad 
example  after  the  Eeformation  had  developed  into  a 
formidable  attack  on  the  Church.  The  form  of  his 
comedy  was  not  that  finally  adopted  by  the  Spaniards. 
It  was  in  five  acts,  with  the  introito  or  prologue. 

A  truly  popular  national  drama  was  hardly  likely 
to  arise  among  courtiers  and  churchmen.     It  needed  a 


chief  who  looked  to  the  common  audience 

Lope  dc  Rueda.    — — — — «— ^— y^— ■»■>— 

as  his  patron,  and  who  also  had  it  in  him 
to  begin  the  work  on  lines  which  literature  could 
afterwards  develop,  Spain  found  such  a  leader  in 
Lope  de  Kueda  (floruit  1544?-1567?).  Little  is 
known  of  his  life,  but  that  little  is  more  than  is 
known  with  certainty  of  some  contemporary  men  of 
letters.  He  was  a  native  of  Seville,  and  originally  a 
goldbeater  by  trade.  It  may  be  that  he  acquired  his 
taste  for  the  stage  by  taking  part  in  the  performance 
of  religious  plays,  which  were  always  acted  by  towns- 
men or  churchmen.  The  separation  of  the  actor  from 
the  amateur,  if  that  is  the  right  word  to  apply  to  the 
burghers  and  peasants  of  the  Middle  Ages  who 
appeared  on  the  stage  partly  for  amusement  and 
partly  from  piety,  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  the  mere 
juggler,  minstrel,  or  acrobat  on  the  other,  was  going 
on  in  France  and  England.  The  same  process  was  at 
work  in  Spain.  By  steps  of  which  we  can  now  learn 
nothing,  Lope  de  Rueda  became  in  the  fullest  sense 
a  playwright  and  actor-manager.  He  strolled  all  over 
Spain.  Cervantes,  who  had  seen  him,  has  immortal- 
ised his  simple  theatre — the  few  boards  which  formed 


THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  69 

the  stage,  the  blanket  which  did  duty  as  scenery,  and 
behind  which  sat  the  guitar- player  who  represented 
the  orchestra,  the  bags  containing  the  sheepskin  jackets 
and  false  beards  forming  the  wardrobe  of  the  com- 
pany. The  purely  literary  importance  of  Lope  de 
Rueda's  work  is  not  great.  That  part  of  it  which 
survived  is  inconsiderable  in  bulk,  and  shows  no 
advance  on  Xaharro.  He  was  not  an  ignorant  man, 
The  Italian  plays  were  certainly  known  to  him, 
and  lie  wrote  pure  Castilian.  But  his  chief  contri- 
bution to  the  form  of  Spanish  dramatic  literature 
was  the  paso  or  passage,  a  brief  interlude,  generally 
between  "fools"  or  "clowns"  in  the  Shakespearian 
sense,  frequently  introduced  between  the  acts  of  a 
regular  comedy.  The  monologue  of  Lance  over  his 
dog,  or  the  scene  between  Speed  and  Lance  with  the 
love-letter,  in  the  third  act  of  the  Two  G-entlemen  of 
Verona,  would  serve  as  pasos.  But  Lope  de  Rueda's 
chief  claim  to  honour  is  that  he  fairly  conquered  for 
the  Spanish  stage  its  place  in  the  sun.  He  hung  on 
no  patron,  but  set  his  boards  up  in  the  market-place, 
looking  to  his  audience  for  his  reward.  When  he 
died,  in  or  about  1567,  the  theatre  was  a  recognised 
part  of  Spanish  life.  _  If  he  had  not  much  enriched 
dramatic  literature,  he  had  provided  those  who  could 
with  a  place  in  which  they  were  free  to  grow  to  the 
extent  of  their  intrinsic  power.  It  is  pleasant  to 
know  that  he  had  his  reward.  He  seems  to  have 
been  a  prosperous  man,  and  Cervantes  speaks  with 
respect  of  his  character.  The  fact  that  he  was  buried 
in  the  Cathedral  of  Cordova  is  a  proof  that  he  was  not 


70       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

considered  a  mere  "  rogue  and  vagabond,"  but  had  at 
least  as  good  a  position  as  an  English  actor  who  was 
the  queen's  or  the  admiral's  "  servant."  As  Lope  de 
Eueda  was  nobody's  servant,  we  may  fairly  draw  the 
deduction  that  the  Spanish  stage  had  a  more  indepen- 
dent position  than  our  own. 

The  school  of  Lope  de  Eueda,  as  they  may  be  called 
with  some  exaggeration,  must  be  allowed  to  pass  under 
The  followers  of  his  name.  The  most  memorable  of  them 
Lope  de  Rueda.  wag  juan  je  Timoneda,  already  named  as 
the  author,  or  adapter,  of  the  Oveja  Perdida.  He  was 
a  bookseller  of  Valencia,  who  died  at  a  great  age,  but 
at  some  uncertain  date,  in  the  reign  of  Philip  II. 
Juan  de  Timoneda  published  all  that  were  published 
of  the  plays  of  Lope  de  Eueda,  and  in  his  capacity  of 
bookseller  -  publisher  was  no  doubt  helpful  to  litera- 
ture. But  as  a  man  of  letters  he  was  mainly  an 
adapter,  and  his  plays  are  echoes  of  Naharro  and 
Eueda,  or  were  conveyed  from  Ariosto.  The  sap  was 
now  rising,  and  the  tree  began  to  bear  fruit  in  more 
than  one  branch.  Spain  as  it  then  was,  and  as  it  long 
remained,  was  rather  a  confederation  of  states  than  a 
state.  There  was  no  capital  in  the  proper  sense  of 
the  word.  Charles  V.  had  never  rested,  and  had  spent 
much  of  his  life  out  of  Spain.  Philip  II.  did  indeed 
fix  his  Court  at  Madrid,  or  in  the  neighbourhood,  but 
it  was  not  until  the  close  of  his  life  that  the  society 
of  a  capital  began  to  form  about  him.  In  the  earlier 
years  of  his  reign  the  capitals  of  the  ancient  kingdoms 
were  still  centres  of  social,  intellectual,  and  artistic 
activity,  nor  did  they  fall  wholly  to  the  level  of  pro- 


THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  71 

vincial  towns  while  any  energy  remained  in  Spain. 
Thus  as  the  taste  for  the  stage  and  for  dramatic  litera- 
ture grew,  it  was  to  be  expected  that  its  effects  would 
be  seen  in  independent  production  in  different  parts 
of  the  Peninsula.  The  writers  who  carried  on  the 
work  of  Lope  de  Eueda,  and  who  prepared  the  way 
for  Lope  de  Vega,  were  not  "  wits  of  the  Court,"  or 
m   ,       .      about  the  Court.     They  were  to  be  found 

The  dramatists  J 

of seviiu  and  at  Seville  and  Valencia.  Juan  de  la 
Cueva,  the  author  of  the  Eg&m/plar  Portico, 
was  a  native  of  the  capital  of  Andalusia.  To  him 
belongs  the  honour  of  first  drawing  on  the  native 
romances  for  subjects,  as  in  his  Cerco  de  Zamora — 
'  Siege  of  Zamora ' — a  passage  of  the  Cicl  legend,  and 
of  first  indicating,  if  not  exactly  outlining,  the  genuine 
Comedia  de  Capa  y  Espada  in  7^  Tnfn.nm/i.rf (*£-—'  TI-ip 
Calumniator.'     In  Valencia  Cristobal  de  yiruesj(1550- 

?)  wrote  plays  less_j3ational  in  subject  _but  more 

in  manner.  He  did  once  join  the  well-meaning  but 
mistaken  band  which  was  endeavouring  to  bind  the 
Spanish  stage  in  the  chains  of  the  Senecan  tragedy ; 
but,  as  a  rule,  he  wrote  wild  romantic  plays,  abound- 
ing in  slaughter,  under  classic  names.  This  was  an 
effort  which  could  not  well  lead  anywhere  to  good, 
but  at  least  it  testifies  to  the  vitality  of  the  interest 
felt  in  the  stage;  and  Valencia  has  this  claim  to  a 
share  in  the  development  of  the  Spanish  drama,  that 
for  a  short  time  it  sheltered,  encouraged,  and  may 
have  helped  to  determine,  the  course  of  the  Phoenix 
of  wits,  the  Wonder  of  Nature,  the  fertile  among  all 
the  most   fertile,   the   once   renowned,  the  then  un- 


72       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

justly  depreciated,  but  the  ever -memorable  Lope  de 
Vega. 

If  a  writer  is  to  be  judged  by  his  native  force,  his 
originality,  the  abundance  of  his  work,  the  effect  he 
produced  on  the  literature  of  his  country,  and  his 
fame  in  his  own  time,  then  Lope,  to  give  him  the  name 
by  which  he  was  and  is  best  known  to  his  countrymen, 
must  stand  at  the  head  of  all  Spain's  men  of  letters.1 

If  it  is  a  rule  admitting  of  no  exception  that  the 
critic  or  historian  of  literature  should  have  read  all 
his  author,  then  I  at  least  must  confess  my  incapacity 
to  speak  of  this  famous  writer.  Yet,  encouraged  by 
a  firm  conviction  that  there  never  lived  nor  does  live, 
or  at  any  future  period  will  live,  anybody  who  has 
achieved  or  will  achieve  this  feat, — being,  moreover, 
persuaded,  for  reasons  to  be  given,  that  it  is  not 
necessary  to  be  achieved,  I  venture  to  go  on. 

Lope  Felix  de  Vega  Carpio  came  of  a  family  which 
originally  belonged  to  the  "  mountain,"  the  hill  country 
Lope  de  Vegas  of  northern  and  north-western  Spain,  which 
We-  never  submitted  to  the  Moor.     His  father 

was  "  hidalgo  de  ejucatoria," — that  is,  noble  by  crea- 
tion,— but  his  mother  was  of  an  old  family,  and  both 
came  from  the  valley  of  Carriedo  in  Asturias.     He  was 

1  Biblioteca  de  Ribadencyra,  vols,  xxiv.,  xxxiv.,  xli.,  lii.,  give  the  best 
modern  texts  of  120  of  Lope  de  Vega's  comedies,  including,  not  very 
properly,  the  Dorotea ;  but  the  Spanish  Academy  has  begun  a  por- 
tentous edition,  in  quarto,  of  his  whole  work.  The  first  volume  con- 
tains a  life  by  Don  C.  A.  de  la  Larrera,  founded  largely  on  the  poet's 
numerous  extant  letters.  The  Obras  Sueltas—i.e. ,  non-dramatic  works 
of  Lope— are  to  be  found  in  a  desirable  form  published  at  Madrid  from 
the  excellent  press  of  Francisco  de  Sancha  in  21  vols.,  177G-79. 


THE   SPANISH  DKAMA.  73 

born  at  Madrid  on  25th  November  1562.  His  life  is 
known  with  exceptional  fulness,  partly  because  many 
passages  of  his  works  are  avowedly  biographical,  partly 
because  a  number  of  his  letters,  addressed  to  his  patron 
in  later  years,  the  Duke  of  Sessa,  have  been  pre- 
served, It  would  be  better  for  Lope's  reputation  if  he 
had  been  more  reticent,  or  his  patron  more  careless. 
As  it  is,  wre  know  not  only  that  he  passed  a  stormy 
youth,  but  that  in  his  later  years  he  was  an  unchaste 
priest.  His  father  died  when  he  was  very  young,  and 
he  was  left  to  the  care  of  an  uncle,  the  Inquisitor  Don 
Miguel  de  Carpio.  The  Jesuits  had  the  honour  of 
educating  him,  among  the  many  famous  men  trained 
in  their  schools.  It  is  recorded  by  his  biographers^ 
and  we  can  believe  it,  that  he  was  very  precocious. 
At  five  he  could  read  Latin,  and  had  already  begun  to 
write  verses.  After  running  away  in  a  boyish  esca- 
pade, he  was  attached  as  page  to  Geronimo  Manrique, 
Bishop  of  Avila,  who  sent  him  to  the  University  of 
Alcala  de  Henares,  the  native  town  of  Cervantes. 
Prom  the  account  given  of  his  youth  in  the  excel- 
lently written  dialogue  story  Dorotea,  he  appears  to 
have  been  a  mercenary  lover,  even  according  to  the 
not  very  delicate  standard  of  his  time.  His  ad- 
ventures were  unsavoury,  and  not  worth  repeating. 
It  is  enough  that,  both  before  he  took  orders  and  in 
later  life  when  he  was  tonsured  and  had  taken  the 
full  vows,  he  presented  a  combination,  not  unknown 
at  any  time  or  in  any  race,  but  especially  common 
on  both  sides  in  the  seventeenth  century,  of  inten- 
sity of  faith  with   the   most  complete  moral  laxity. 


74       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

He  alternated  between  penance  and  relapses.  After 
leaving  Alcala  he  was  for  a  time  attached  to  the 
Duke  of  Alva,  the  grandson  of  the  renowned  gover- 
nor of  the  Low  Countries.  For  him  he  wrote  the 
pastoral  Arcadia,  which  deals  with  the  duke's  amours. 
He  married,  but  marriage  produced  no  effect  on  his 
habits.  He  was  exiled  to  Valencia  for  two  years, 
in  consequence  of  obscure  troubles  arising,  he  says, 
from  "jealousy."  Shortly  after  his  return  to  Madrid 
his  wife  died,  but  he  continued  to  give  cause  for 
"jealousy,"  and  other  troubles  sent  him  off  to  join 
the  Armada.  From  that  campaign  of  failure  and 
suffering  he  had  the  good  fortune  to  return  in  safety, 
and  he  bore  it  so  well  that  he  wrote  at  least  a  great 
part  of  a  long  continuation  of  Ariosto,  called  The 
Beauty  of  Angelica,  during  the  voyage.  After  his  re- 
turn to  Madrid  in  1590  he  was  again  married,  and 
again  marriage  made  little  difference.  In  1609  he 
became  a  priest.  During  his  later  years  he  was  at- 
tached, not  apparently  as  a  servant  but  as  a  patronised 
friend,  to  Don  Pedro  Fernandez  de  Cordova,  first 
Marquess  Priego,  and  then  Duke  of  Sessa, — a  very 
dissolute  gentleman  of  literary  tastes,  belonging  to 
the  famous  house  which  had  produced  the  Great 
Captain,  Gonsalvo  de  Cordova.  He  died  at  the  age 
of  seventy-three  in  1635. 

A  poet  who  could  venture  on  so  great  an  enterprise 
as  a  continuation  of  Ariosto  amid  all  the  distractions 
His  infiuence  of  the  Armada  cannot  have  wanted  for 
on  the  drama,  confidence  in  himself,  nor  was  he  likely  to 
have  an  idle  pen.     The  productiveness  of  Lope  was 


THE  SPANISH  DRAMA.  75 

indeed  enormous.  He  may  be  said  to  have  tried  every 
literary  form  of  his  time,  from  the  epic  on  the  Italian 
model  down_to  the  romance.  In  bulk,  the  life-work 
of  an  industrious  journalist  might  be  about  equal  to 
his  surviving  writings.  And  Lope  was  no  mere  jour- 
nalist. His  execution  of  everything  he  touched  has  a 
certain  interest.  If  space  allowed,  there  would  be 
something  to  say  of  his  religious  poem  on  San 
Isidro  and  his  sonnets,  serious  and  burlesque.  But 
space  does  not  allow,  and  we  must  consider  him  here 
chiefly  in  his  great  and  dominant  character  of  dram- 
atist, remembering  always  that  he  was  a  man  of  many- 
sided  ability,  and  that  the  average  cleverness  of  his 
non-dramatic  work  goes  far  to  justify  the  admiration 
of  his  countrymen  in  his  time,  and  the  place  they 
have  never  ceased  to  give  him  as,  with  the  one  excep- 
tion of  Cervantes,  the  chief  of  their  literature.  The 
number  of  his  plays  has  remained  a  wonder  and  a 
legend.  Eighteen  hundred  comedias  and  four  hundred 
autos  sacramentales  is  the  figure  given  on  fair  authority 
as  his  total  life-work  for  the  stage.  He  himself  con- 
fesses to  two  hundred  and  nineteen  pieces  as  early  as 
1603,  and  in  1624  to  one  thousand  and  seventy.  An 
eyewitness  has  recorded  that  he  once  wrote  five  plays 
in  "fifteen  days;  and  that  on  another  occasion,  hav- 
ing undertaken  to  collaborate  with  two  friends  in  a 
comedy,  he  finished  his  share  of  the  work  before 
breakfast,  though  it  was  one  act  out  of  three,  and 
wrote  some  other  verse  into  the  bargain.  Nor  are 
these  stories,  incredible  as  they  sound,  altogether  be- 
yond belief. 


76       EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

They  could  be  accepted  without  hesitation  if  the 
writing  of  Lope  de  Vega  were  all  imitative  and  bad. 
But  that  is  far  from  being  the  case.  Over  and  above 
the  fact  that  he  sometimes — as  in  the  Dorotea,  for 
example — wrote  an  admirable  style,  he  was  the 
creator  of  a  literary  form.  Lope  de  Vega  was  the 
real  creator  of  the  Spanish  comcdia,  a  word  which 
must  not  be  understood  to  mean  only  comedy,  but 
stage-play  of  every  kind.  Others  prepared  the  way, 
and  some  collaborated  in  the  ending  of  the  work, 
but  the  merit  is  none  the  less  his.  Without  Lope 
there  could  have  been  no  Calderon,  who  found  the  form 
ready  made  to  his  hands.  That  a  writer  of  so  much 
productiveness,  and  so  little  concentration,  would  have 
many  faults  will  be  easily  understood.  Finish  was 
not  to  be  expected  from  him,  nor  profundity.  There 
would  inevitably  be  much  that  was  hasty  and  careless, 
much  repetition,  much  taking  of  familiar  situations, 
much  use  of  stock  characters,  and  a  great  deal  of 
what  the  French  call  the  it  peu  pris — the  "that  is 
good  enough  " — instead  of  the  absolutely  best,  which 
is  not  to  be  attained  except  by  thought  and  the  labour 
of  the  file.  He  must  have  been  prepared  to  do  what- 
ever would  please  an  uncritical  audience,  as  indeed 
Lope  candidly  avowed  that  he  was.  In  short,  he 
might  be  expected  to  have  all  the  weaknesses  of  the 
class  which  Carlyle  defined  as  "the  shallow  vehement," 
and  they  would  be  the  more  conspicuous  because  he 
lived  in  a  time  of  learning,  but  of  no  great  criticism, 
because  he  was  a  beginner,  and  not  least  because  lie 
belonged  to  a  people  who  have  always  been  indifferent 


THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  77 

to  finish  of  workmanship.  But  with  all  this,  for 
which  a  narrow  criticism  of  the  stamp  of  Boileau's 
would  have  condemned  him  utterly,  Lope  had  the 
one  thing  necessary,  which  is  creative  faculty.  The 
quality  of  his  plays  will  be  best  shown  later  on,  when 
we  treat  of  the  Spanish  stage  as  a  whole.  For  the 
present  it  is  enough  to  deal  with  the  more  mechanical 
side  of  his  workmanship.  Before  his  time  Spanish 
play- writers  had  hesitated  between  the  classic  division 
into  five  acts  and  a  tentative  division  into  four.  One 
early  and  forgotten  writer,  Avendano,  took  three. 
Lope,  not  without  the  co-operation  of  others,  but 
mainly  by  his  example,  established  this  last  as  the 
recognised  number  of  jornadas — acts — for  a  Spanish 
play.  The  choice  was  made  for  a  definite  reason.  In 
the  Arte  Nuevo  de  Haccr  Comedias — a  verse  epistle 
written  to  a  friend  who  had  asked  him  to  justify  his 
works  before  the  critics  who  held  by  the  classic  rules 
— Lope  laid  it  down  that  the  first  act  should  introduce 
the  characters  and  knit  the  intrigue ;  the  second  lead 
to  the  crisis,  the  scdne  a  /aire  of  French  dramatic 
critics ;  and  the  third  wind  all  up.  JIc  formulated 
the  great  secret  of  the  playwright's  craft,  which  is 
that  the  audience  must  always  know  what  is  going  to 
happen,  but  never  exactly  how  it  is  going  to  be  brought 
about.  They  must  never  be  left  in  a  puzzling  doubt 
as  to  the  meaning  of  what  is  going  on,  and  yet  must 
always  be  kept  in  a  pleasing  uncertainty  as  to  what  is 
about  to  happen  next.  This  supposed  a  very  real 
unity  of  action,  compatible  with  plot  and  underplot, 
but  not  with  two  independent  plots.     For  the  unities 


78       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

of  time  and  place  he  cared  as  much,  and  as  little,  as 
our  own  Elizabethans. 

Not  even  Lope's  fertility  and  activity  could  have 
been  equal  to  the  production  of  two  thousand  two 
hundred  plays,  of  which  all,  or  even  a  majority,  were 
executed  in  conformity  with  his  own  standard.  Such 
a  piece  of  construction  as  the  Dama  Mclindrosa  can- 
not have  been  one  of  the  five  plays  written  in  fifteen 
days.  There  is  a  great  deal  in  Lope's  literary  baggage 
which  is  mere  scribbling,  meant  to  please  an  audience 
for  an  afternoon.  Though  the  Spaniards  loved  the 
theatre  much,  they  were  not  numerous  enough  in  the 
towns  to  supply  many  audiences,  and  they  clamoured 
for  new  things.  To  meet  this  demand,  every  Spanish 
The  conditions  dramatist  who  wished  to  stand  well  with 
of  the  work.  thg  managers  was  compelled  to  produce  a 
great  deal  of  what  may  be  called  journalism  for  the 
theatre,  the  mere  rapid  throwing  together  of  accept- 
able matter,  which  might  be  love  -  adventures  or  the 
news  of  the  day,  historical  stories  or  religious  legend, 
in  stock  forms.  The  stage  was  not  only  all  the  litera- 
ture of  the  mass  of  the  people,  but  all  the  newspapers, 
and  all  the  "  music-hall "  side  of  their  amusements  too. 
In  all  cases  the  comedy  was  accompanied  by  inter- 
ludes of  the  nature  of  music-hall  "turns,"  loas}jpasos, 
"or  entremeses — brief  scenes  of  a  comic  kind,  sons^s,  and, 
above  all,  dances.  The  patio  or  court — that  is,  the  pit 
—  filled  by  the  poorest,  most  numerous,  and  most 
formidable  part  of  the  audience,  who  stood,  and  who 
were  addressed  in  compliment  as  the  Senate  or  the 
musketeers,  and  were  known  in  actors'  slang  as  the 


THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  79 

chusma  —  i.e.,  the  galley-slaves  —  would  not  endure 
to  be  deprived  of  their  dances.  So  the  most  truly 
famous  comedy  would  hardly  have  escaped  the  cu- 
cumbers with  which  the  "grave  Senate"  expressed 
its  disapproval,  if  it  had  been  presented  without 
"crutches"  in  the  form  of  the  dance,  the  song,  or 
the  farcical  interlude.  Thus  it  inevitably  followed 
that  the  playwright  was  often  called  upon  to  supply 
what  was  in  fact  padding  to  fill  up  the  intervals  be- 
tween the  popular  shows.  And  this  Lope  supplied, 
besides  writing  the  entremeses,  moi  jig  ana  as ,  \sayneTes} — ajl 
forms  of  brief  farce.  Such  work  could  not  well  be 
literary.  His  reputation,  and  indeed  the  reputation 
of  the  Spanish  drama,  has  suffered  because  matter  of 
this  kind  was  not  allowed  to  die  with  the  day  for 
which  it  was  written.  During  his  later  years,  and  the 
better  part  of  the  life  of  his  successor,  Calderon,  the 
drama  held  its  place  at  Court.  Plays  were  frequently 
first  given  before  the  Court  (which  at  that  time,  and 
at  all  festivals,  meant  substantially  every  lady  and 
gentleman  in  Madrid),  before  reaching  the  public 
"theatre.  This  audience  demanded  a  higher  level  of 
work,  and  the  best  comedias  were  probably  written  for 
it.  Yet  the  drama  made  its  way  to  the  palace,  and 
was  not  originally  directed  to  the  king  and  courtiers. 
It  came  as  Lope  de  Yega  had  shaped  it,  and  so  re- 
mained in  all  essentials.  The  metrical  form  was  fixed 
by  him  :  the  silvas  or  liras — lyric  verse  in  hendeca- 
syllabic  and  seven  -  foot  lines  —  for  the  passionate 
passages,  the  sonnet  for  soliloquies,  the  romance  for 
narrative  and  dialogue,  the  vedonclillas  or  roundelays 


80       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

of  assonant  and  consonant  verse,  are  all  enumerated 
by  him  in  the  Arte  Nucvo  de  Racer  Comedias.  And 
what  he  did  for  the  secular  play  he  did  for  the  re- 
ligious.    The  Voyage  of  the  Soul,  given  in  his  prose 

y  story,  El  Peregrino  en  Su  Patria,  is  an  Auto  Sacra- 
mental as  complete  as  any  of  Calderon's.  Whatever 
the  Spanish  drama  has  to  give  us  was  either  found 
undeveloped  by  Lope  de  Vega,  and  perfected  in  shape 
by  him,  or  was  his  invention.  Other  men  put  their 
mark  on  their  versions  of  his  models,  or  showed 
qualities  which  he  wanted,  but  nobody  modified  the 
Spanish  drama  as  he  had  built  it  in  any  essential. 
He  was,  as  far  as  any  single  man  could  be,  the  creator 
of  the  dramatic  literature  of  his  country ;  and  even 
though  Tirso  de  Molina  was  greater  in  this  or  that 
respect^  Alarcon  had  a  finer  skill  in  drawing  a  char- 
acter,  Calderon  a  deeper  poetic  genius, — though  he 
might  have  cause  to  envy  this  man's  art  or  that  man's 
scope, — yd  he  must  rem^ainjjie  chief  of  one  of  the  very 
few  brilliant  and  thoroughly  national  dramatic  litera- 
tures of  the  world. 

This  predominance  of  the  Luca  fa  presto  of  liter- 
ature may  have  been  a  misfortune,  though  when  the 
conditions  are  remembered,  and  the  innate  indifference 
of  the  Spaniard  to  artistic  finish  is  allowed  for,  an 
inevitable  one.      We  must  accept  it  and  its  conse- 

v^quences.  One  of  them  is  this,  that  after  Lope  de 
Vega  there  could  be  no  room  for  historical  develop- 
ment on  the  Spanish  stage.  Calderon  was  a  different 
man  writing  the  same  drama.  There  is  no  such  differ- 
ence between  these  two  as  between  Shakespeare  and 


THE   SPANISH   DKAMA.  81 

Ben  Jonson ;  and  nowhere  in  Spanish  dramatic  liter- 
ature is  there  anything  answering  to  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  Elizabethan  and  the  Kestoration  stages.  The. 
division  often  made  between  the  school  of  Lope  and 
the  ^school  of  Calderon  is  very  arbitrary.  It --is 
largely  a  matter  of  date.  The  earlier  men  are  classed 
with    the   first,    and    the    later   with   the 

Con  temporaries  -  ■■■■nurfni    -----     --  Mlll    , -.-,.— 

and  followers  second.  To  find  a  distinction  between 
them  it  is  necessary  to  insist  on  mere 
matters  of  detail,  or  on  such  purely  personal  differ- 
ences of  genius  and  character  as  must  always  be  found 
where  there  is  life  among  a  large  body  of  men.  The 
rule  of  a  literary  as  of  a  political  despot  may  cramp 
as  well  as  support.  It  is  possible  that  if  they  had  not 
been  overshadowed  by  the  Marvel  of  Nature  his  con- 
temporaries might  have  developed  with  more  freedom. 
None  of  them  may  seem  to  have  suffered  more  from 
the  consecration  of  hasty  writing  than /Gabriel  Tellez 
(1570  ?-1648),  known  in  literature  as  the  Maestro  Tirso 
de  Molina. 'a  churchman,  who  died  as  head  of  a  re- 


ligious house  at  Soria.     Tirso  de  Molina  may  be  said  S 
to  live  on  the  universal  stage  of  the  world  as  the  first 
creator  of  Don  Juan.1    One  of  his  plays,  The  Vengeance 
of  Tamar,  contains  a  scene  of  very  high  tragic  power 
— that  in  which  the  outraged  sister  waits  veiled  out-  I 
side  the  tent  prepared  by  Absalom  for  the  slaughter 
of  his  brother.     She  has  a  long  double-edged  dialogue 
with  the  offender,  full  of  warnings  of  doom  intelligible    \ 
to  the  audience,  but  misunderstood  by  him,  and  when 

1  All  the  writers  mentioned  in  this  paragraph  will  be  found  under 
their  names  in  the  Biblioteca  de  Ribadeneyra. 

F 


82       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

he  has  gone  to  his  fate  her  soliloquy  is  a  fine  example 
of  the  legitimate  dramatic  use  of  the  chorus.  There  is 
a  certain  quiet  in  this  scene,  a  reserve,  and  an  appeal 
not  to  the  mere  passion  for  seeing  something  going  on, 
but  to  the  emotions  of  pity  and  terror,  which  is  rare 
indeed  on  the  amusing,  but  too  often  noisy  and  shallow, 
Spanish  stage.  Calderon,  using  the  freedom  of  a  Span- 
ish dramatist,  conveyed  the  whole  act  into  his  Hairs 
of  Absalom.  One  is  inclined  to  think  that  the  play- 
wright who  first  rough-hewed  the  universally  true  char- 
acter of  Don  Juan  might,  if  he  had  felt  called  upon  to 
finish  as  well  as  to  imagine  and  sketch,  have  also  given 
us  the  finished  type  of  the  debauchee  whom  the  pursuit 
of  his  own  pleasure  has  made  a  violator  and  brute,  all 
the  more  odious  because  there  is  on  him  an  outward 
show  of  gallantry  and  high-breeding.  Tirso's  Marta 
la  Piadosa  —  'The  Pious  Martha'  —  has  been  most 
absurdly  compared  to  Tartuffe.  It  is  the  story  of  a 
lively  young  lady  who  affects  a  passion  for  good  works 
and  a  vow  of  charity  in  order  to  escape  a  disagreeable 
marriage,  and  is  in  other  respects  the  usual  comedia 
de  capa  y  espada.  Yet  there  is  a  power  of  character- 
isation in  it,  a  liveliness  and  a  genial  humanity,  which 
need  little  to  be  the  most  accomplished  comedy.  But 
it  misses  of  what  it  might  have  reached,  and  we  may 
say  that  it  failed  because  his  audience,  and  the  taste 
of  his  time,  called  upon  Tirso  for  nothing  better  than 
hasty  work.  In  Guillen  de  Castro  (1569-1631),  again, 
the  friend  of  Lope  at  Valencia,  we  find  the  same  con- 
trast between  a  vigorous  original  force  of  imagination, 
with  great  powers  of  presentment,  and  a  sudden  drop 


THE   SPANISH   DKAMA.  83 

into  what  no  doubt  pleased  the  "  musketeers/'  but  is 
now  only  worth  looking  at  because  it  did.  His  Youth 
of  the  Cid,  which  up  to  a  certain  point  supplied  Cor- 
neille  with  more  than  a  model,  falls  to  puerile  miracle 
and  ends  incoherently.  I  Juan  Euiz  de  Alarcon  reached 
very  high  comedy.  His  Vcrclad  Sospcchosa  — '  The 
Doubted  Truth'  —  has  had  a  great  progeny  on  the 
stage  of  the  world.  All  the  romancing  liars  —  they 
who  lie  not  for  sordid  ends  but  by  imagination,  and 
from  a  love  of  shining,  or  getting  out  of  the  immediate 
difficulty  —  who  follow  one  another  on  all  theatres, 
may  claim  descent  from  his  hero.  But  Alarcon  was 
not  popular,  and  he  also  could  be  hasty.  The  list  of 
names  might  easily  be  swollen  in  a  country  which 
counted  its  known  dramatic  writers  at  certain  periods 
by  sixties  and  seventies,  but  nothing  would  be  gained 
for  the  understanding  of  the  school  by  the  repetition.1 

Although  he  cannot  be  said  to  have  developed  or 
even  modified  the  form  of  dramatic  literature  in  Spain, 
Calderon  was  too  considerable  a  man  to  be  allowed  to 
pass  with  a  school.2 

Pedro  Calderon  de  la  Barca  Barreda  Henao  y 
Piano,  Knight  of  the  Order  of  Santiago,  Priest,  Hon- 
orary   Chaplain   of  his   Majesty,   and    our  Lords  the 


1  Whoever  wishes  to  gain  an  original  knowledge  of  the  dramatists 
of  this  time  may  be  referred  to  vols,  xliii.  and  xlv.  of  the  Biblioteca 
de  Ribadcneyra,  with  their  introductions  and  catalogues  by  Don 
Ramon  Mesonero  Romanos. 

2  Not  the  best  but  the  most  accessible  edition  of  Calderon's  plays  is 
that  of  J.  J.  Keil,  Leipzig,  1827.  Don  Eugenio  Hartzenbusch  has 
edited  him  for  the  Biblioteca  de  Bibadeneyra,  vols,  vii.,  ix.,  xii.,  xiv., 
and  lviii. 


84       EUROPEAN   LITEllATUltE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

New  Kings  of  the  Cathedral  of  Toledo — to  give  him 
all  his  names  and  titles — was  a  native  of 

Cakleron.       ■*  r     i    •  i 

Madrid,  "  though  trom  another  place  he 
took  his  name,  an  house  of  ancient  fame."  The 
splendour  of  his  pedigree  was  perhaps  exaggerated 
by  the  partiality  of  friends.  It  is  a  point  on  which 
the  Spaniard  has  all  the  reverence  of  the  Scotsman. 
Yet  he  was  undoubtedly  a  noble,  and  "  came  from  the 
mountain,"  as  indeed  did  all  Spain's  greatest  men  in 
letters  and  art.  His  long  life,  which  lasted  from  1600 
to  1681,  unlike  Lope's,  was  honourable,  but  is  other- 
wise little  known.  We  are  told  that  he  served  as  a 
soldier  in  his  youth,  but  in  a  time  of  truce  when  not 
much  service  was  to  be  seen.  From  one  of  the  few 
certain  passages  in  his  life  it  appears  that  he  was 
not  slow  to  draw  his  sword  on  sufficient  provocation. 
He  had  once  to  take  sanctuary  after  chasing  an  actor 
through  the  streets  of  Madrid  sword  in  hand.  The 
man  had  stabbed  Calderon's  brother  in  the  back,  and 
the  excuse  was  held  to  be  good.  For  the  rest,  the 
poet's  life  was  peaceful  and  prosperous.  He  was 
educated  by  the  Jesuits  and  at  Salamanca,  was 
known  as  a  writer  when  he  was  twenty,  and  after 
the  death  of  Lope  de  Vega,  he  became  the  acknow- 
ledged chief  of  Spanish  dramatists.  Philip  IV.  greatly 
favoured  and  employed  him.  Calderon  was,  in  fact, 
as  much  the  king's  poet  as  Velasquez  was  his  painter. 
By  the  favour  of  the  king  he  also  was  admitted  into 
the  Order  of  Santiago,  which  might  bring  with  it  a 
commandery  and  a  revenue.  In  the  revolt  of  Cata- 
lonia in  1640,  when  the  king  went  to  the  army,  Cal- 


THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  85 

deron  joined  the  other  knights  who  rendered  their 
military  service  under  the  royal  banner.  At  the  age 
of  fifty-one  he  took  orders.  This  was  not  always  a 
proof  of  a  sincere  vocation,  for  Swift's  saying,  that  it 
was  easier  to  provide  for  ten  men  in  the  Church  than 
one  out  of  it,  was  even  truer  of  Spain  than  of  England. 
But  Calderon's  sincerity  need  not  be  doubted.  He 
appears  to  have  given  up  writing  directly  for  the 
theatre  after  taking  orders,  but  continued  to  produce 
plays  for  the  Court  which  were  repeated  in  public. 
During  the  latter  half  of  his  life  he  preferred  to  de- 
vote himself  to  the  autos  sacrame?itales,  which  he  had  ^ 
an  exclusive  right  to  supply  to  the  town  of  Madrid. 
No  dramatic  author  of  the  time  seems  to  have  been 
so  indifferent  to  the  fate  of  his  plays.  A  few  were 
printed  by  his  brother,  but  he  himself  published  none, 
though  he  was  continually  vexed  by  piracies,  and  by 
learning  that  rubbish  had  been  presented  in  his  name 
to  provincial  audiences.  In  his  old  age  he  drew  up 
a  list  of  his  genuine  plays  at  the  request  of  the  Duke 
of  Veragua,  the  representative  of  Columbus.  From 
the  letter  sent  with  the  list  we  learn  that  there  were 
two  noted  pests  of  the  Madrid  theatre,  one  known 
as  Great,  and  the  other  as  Little,  Memory.  The  first 
could  remember  a  whole  play  (one  supposes  it  must 
have  been  taliter  qualiter)  after  hearing  it  once,  the 
other  after  hearing  it  two  or  three  times,  and  the  two 
gained  a  dishonourable  livelihood  by  poaching  for 
piratical  managers.  As  many  dramas  reached  the 
press  by  their  exertions,  the  wretched  state  of  the  text 
is  easily  accounted  for.    When  Great  or  Little  Memory 


86       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

was  at  a  loss  he  put  in  his  own  trash.  Even  in  Cal- 
deron's  genial  and  peaceful  old  age  this  outrage  moved 
him  to  bitterness.  Yet  he  never  edited  his  plays. 
His  executor,  Don  Juan  de  Vera  Tasis,  who  published 
the  first  edition  after  his  death,  was  unfortunately  a 
partisan  of  the  detestable  estilo  culto,  and  is  suspected 
of  having  inserted  some  very  bad  examples  of  this 
vicious  affectation.  Between  the  indifference  of  the 
poet  and  the  insufficiency  of  the  editor  the  text  has 
suffered  greatly.  Calderon's  high  estimate,  not  per- 
haps so  much  of  his  own  autos  as  of  the  sanctity  of 
work  written  for  a  religious  purpose,  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  he  did  publish  some  of  them,  lest  they  should 
suffer  the  same  misuse  as  his  plays. 

The  reputation  of  Calderon  has  suffered  from  the 
opposite  evil  to  that  which  has  injured  Lope's.  The 
Phoenix  of  Geniuses  has  been  punished  in  modern 
times  for  the  wild  overpraise  of  his  own,  by  some 
neglect.  German  criticism  has  treated  him  as  a  mere 
amuser.  Calderon,  on  the  other  hand,  has  been  the 
victim  of  the  incontinence  in  praise  of  the  Schlegels, 
who  were  determined  to  make  another,  and  a  better, 
Shakespeare  if  they  could  not  find  one.  Many  read- 
ers who  had  formed  an  idea  of  him  at  second  hand 
have  probably  suffered  a  severe  shock  on  becoming 
acquainted  with  his  work.1 

1  For  an  example  see  the  Spanish  Drama  by  Mr  G.  H.  Lewes, 
1846,  a  shrewd  piece  of  criticism  by  one  who  was  a  good  judge  of  a 
play.  But  Mr  Lewes  was  too  manifestly  excited  to  revenge  his  own 
once  excessive  confidence  in  Schlegel  on  Calderon.  Don  M.  Menen- 
dez's  Calderon  y  su  cscuela,  a  series  of  lectures  delivered  in  1881, 
is  a  very  sound  piece  of  criticism. 


THE    SPANISH   DRAMA.  87 

No  reader  should  expect  to  find  a  world  poet  in 

Calderon,  who  was  a  Spaniard  of  the  Spaniards.     No 

more   intensely   national  poet,  ever  wrote, 

Ills  limitations. 

and  it  is  for  that  he  must  be  read  and 
appreciated.  Moreover,  he  is  a  Spaniard  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  when  the  monarchical  sentiment  was 
at  its  height,  and  when  all  life  was  permeated  by  a 
religion  in  which  the  creed  had,  in  Mr  Swinburne's 
phrase,  replaced  the  decalogue.  His  conception  of 
honour  (we  shall  come  back  to  the  point  of  honour 
as  a  motive  for  Spanish  plays)  is  that  of  his  time 
—  thoroughly  oriental.  It  was  not  the  sentiment 
which  nerves  a  man  against  fear  of  consequences, 
and  enables  him  to  resist  the  temptation  to  do  what 
is  dishonourable,  or,  better  still,  makes  him  incapable 
of  feeling  it,  but  the  fixed  determination  not  to  allow 
the  world  the  least  excuse  for  saying  that  somebody 
has  done  something  to  you  which  renders  you  undig- 
nified or  ridiculous.  As  has  been  already  said,  he 
added  nothing  to  the  formal  part  of  Spanish  dramatic 
literature,  not  even  to  the  auto.  He  was  too  much 
affected  by  the  Gongorism  of  his  early  manhood,  for 
even  the  most  partial  of  editors  cannot  throw  all,  or 
even  the  most,  of  the  errors  in  that  style  found  in 
his  plays  on  Don  Juan  de  Vera  Tasis. 

Yet  with  his  limitations  Calderon  was  a  considerable 

poet,  and  a  very  skilful  master  of  the  machinery  of  the 

Spanish   comedy.     When  not  misled  into 

Gongorism    he    wrote    magnificently,    and 

there  are  lyric  choral  passages  in  the  cmtos  which  Mr 

Ticknor  rightly  praised   as  worthy   of  Ben  Jonson's 


88       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

masques.  Indeed  not  a  little  of  his  work  is  iden- 
tical in  purpose  with  the  masque,  though  different 
in  form.  As  a  Court  poet  he  was  called  upon  to 
write  for  the  entertainment  of  the  king  and  the 
courtiers,  and  to  supply  theatrical  shows  at  royal 
marriages,  births  of  princes,  and  so  forth.  There  was 
no  intrinsic  novelty  here,  for  Calderon  did  but  give 
the  high-bred  Spaniard  of  the  Court  a  finer  poetic 
version  of  the  dances,  songs,  and  bright  short  pieces 
under  various  names,  which  delighted  the  humbler 
Spaniard  in  the  patios.  The  intensely  national  senti- 
ment which  he  expresses  may  strike  us  at  times  as 
a  little  empty,  but  is  high  and  shining,  and  lends 
itself  to  a  certain  stately  treatment  which  he  could 
give.  The  romantic  sentiment  was  strong  in  Calderon, 
and  even  in  the  most  purely  Spanish  trappings  that  is 
f  ^""noT  re^aote~frqiir-Tts: — A~^gBt"^dlo^gealt  not  inade- 
quately with  great  passions  could  hardly  help  some- 
times piercing  through  the  merely  national  to  the 
universal,  though  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  his 
characters  rarely  utter  the  individual  human  saying, 
and  that  he  was  far  too  fond  of  long  casuistical  ampli- 
fications, which  are  almost  always  frigidly  pedantic, 
and  not  rarely  bombastieal.  The  most  quoted  passage 
~~ "in*  all  his  work,  the  lines  which  close  the  second  act 
of  La  Vida  es  Sueno,  gain  by  being  taken  apart  from 
their  context: — 

"  Que  es  la  vida '?  Un  frenesi : 
Que  es  la  vida  ?  Una  ilusion, 
Una  sombra,  una  ficcion 

Y  el  mayor  bien  es  pequeno 
Que  toda  la  vida  es  sueno 

Y  los  sueuos  sueno  son." 


THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  89 

"  We  are  such,  stuff 
As  dreams  are  made  of,  and  our  little  life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep." 

It  is  a  fine  poetic  reflection,  well  fitted  to  stand  beside 
the  yet  more  beautiful  lines  of  the  Tempest,  but  it  is 
not  wise  to  approach  the  play  in  the  hope  that  all  of 
it  will  be  found  at  the  same  level. 

As  in  the  case  of  Lope,  though  not  to  the  same 
extent,  the  critic  who  is  severely  limited  in  space 
must  be  content  to  speak  in  general  terms  of  much  of 
Calderon's  work.  It  would  be  interesting  to  take  El 
Magico  Procligioso  ('  The  Wonder-working  Magician '), 
El  Mayor  Monstruo  los  Zelos  ('Jealousy  the  greatest 
Monster '),  and  La  Puente  de  Mantible  ('  The  Bridge  of 
Mantible '),  and  show  what  has  been  added  in  any  of 
them — or  a  score  of  others  which  it  were  as  easy  to 
name — to  the  unchanging  framework  of  the  Spanish 
play.  In  the  Magico  Procligioso,  for  instance,  perhaps 
the  most  generally  known  of  Calderon's  greater  dramas, 
which  has  been  ineptly  enough  compared  to  Faust,  we 
have,  in  addition  to  the  usual  machinery  of  dama, 
galan,  and  gracioso,  a  story  of  temptation  by  the  devil. 
Looked  at  closely,  it  is  a  tale  told  for  edification,  and 
for  the  purpose  of  showing  what  a  fool  the  devil 
essentially  is.  He  is  argued  off  his  legs  by  Cyprian 
the  hero  at  the  first  bout,  beaten  completely  by  stock 
arguments  to  be  found  in  text-books.  His  one  resource 
is  to  promise  Cyprian  the  possession  of  Justina,  and 
he  signally  fails  to  keep  his  word.  The  false  Justina 
he  has  created  to  satisfy  the  hero  turns  to  a  skeleton 
at  once,  and  Cyprian  becomes  a  Christian  because  he 
discovers  that  the  devil  is  unable  to  give  him  posses- 


90       EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

sion  of  a  woman,  and  is  less  powerful  than  God,  which 
he  knew  by  the  fiend's  own  confession  at  the  beginning. 
It  is  an  edifying  story  to  all  who  accept  the  premisses 
and  the  parade  of  scholastic  argument,  and  are  prepared 
to  allow  for  the  time,  the  nation,  and  the  surroundings. 
Calderon  wound  up  and  rounded  off  the  historical 
development  of  the  Spanish  drama  so  completely  that 
The  school  of  little  need  be  said  of  his  school,  which 
caideron.  indeed  only  means  contemporaries  who 
wrote  Lope's  drama  with  Calderon's  style.  Yet 
Moreto  was  a  strong  man,  and  to  him  also  belongs 
the  honour  of  having  put  on  the  stage  an  enduring 
type,  the  Lindo  Don  Diego,  who  was  the  ancestor 
of  our  own  Sir  Fopling  Flutter,  of  Lord  Foppington, 
and  of  many  another  theatrical  dandy.  Francisco 
de  Eoxas,  too,  has  left  a  point-of-honour  play,  not 
unworthy  of  his  master,  Del  Bey  Abajo,  Ninguno — 
'From  the  King  downwards,  Nobody.'  One  feature 
common  to  all  the  later  writers  for  the  old  Spanish 
stage  may  be  noticed.  It  was  their  growing  tendency 
to  re-use  the  situations  and  plots  of  their  predecessors. 
Moreto  was  a  notable  proficient  in  this,  and  Calderon 
himself  did  as  much.  It  seems  as  if  a  theatre  which 
dealt  almost  wholly  with  intrigue  and  situation  had 
exhausted  all  possible  combinations  and  could  only 
repeat.  When  men  began  to  go  back  in  this  fashion 
the  end  was  at  hand.  Calderon,  less  fortunate  than 
Velasquez,  outlived  the  king  who  was  their  common 
patron,  and  saw  with  his  own  eyes  the  decadence  of 
Spain.  Beyond  him  there  was  only  echo,  and  then 
dotage  prolonged  into  the  eighteenth  century. 


91 


CHAPTER    IV. 

FORMS   OF   THE   SPANISH   DRAMA. 

THE  PREVAILING  QUALITY  OP  THE  SPANISH  DRAMA  —  TYPICAL  EXAM- 
PLES— 'LA  DAMA  MELINDROSA' — 'EL  TEJEDOR  DE  SEGOVIA  ' — 'EL 
CONDENADO  POR  DESCONFIADO  ' — THE  PLAYS  ON  "  HONOUR  " — 'A 
SECRETO  AGRAVIO  SECRETA  VENGANZA '  —  THE  "  AUTO  SACRA- 
MENTAL"—  THE  "LOA  '  —  THE  '  VERDADERO  DIOS  PAN'  —  '  LOS 
DOS   HABLADORES.' 

There  may  well  seem  to  be  something  over-bold,  even 
impudent,  in  the  attempt  to  give  an  account  of  the 
different  kinds  of  Spanish  drama  in  one  brief  chapter. 
Its  abundance  alone  would  appear  to  render  the  effort 
vain,  and  the  common  elaborate  classification  of  the 
plays  into  heroic,  romantic,  religious,  of  "cloak  and 
sword,"  and  so  forth,  seems  to  imply  the  existence  of 
a  number  of  types  distinct  from  one  another,  and 
calling  for  separate  treatment.  Yet  though  I  cannot 
hope  to  be  exhaustive,  it  is,  in  my  opinion,  possible 
m  to  be  at  least  not  wholly  inadequate.     The 

The  prevailing  *  x 

quality  of  the     task  is  materially  facilitated  by  the  great 

Spanish  aranuu   uniformity      of      ^      Spanish     drama.         No 

matter  what  the  name  may  be,  the  action  is  much  the 


92       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

same,  and  the  characters  do  not  greatly  vary.  It  has 
been  said  that  Calderon's  personages  are  all  like 
bullets  cast  in  a  mould;  and  though  this,  as  is  the 
case  with  most  sweeping  assertions,  fails  to  take 
notice  of  the  exceptions,  it  has  much  truth,  and  may 
J  be  applied  to  others.  The  Spanish  drama  is  above 
all  a  drama  of  action,  conducted  by  fixed  types.  Juan 
de  la  Cueva  had  said  in  a  spirit  of  prophecy  that  the 
artful  fable  was  the  glory  of  the  Spanish  stage,  and 
Lope  appeared  in  good  time  to  prove  him  right.  The 
types  who  move  in  the  action  are  the  Dama,  the  Golan, 
the  Barba,  and  the  Gracioso — the  Lady,  the  Lover, 
the  Old  Man,  and  the  Clown.  They  have  the  stage 
to  themselves  in  the  comedia  de  capa  y  espada.  This 
phrase,  when  translated  into  French  or  English,  has 
an  air  of  romance  about  it  which  is  somewhat  mis- 
leading. The  cloak  and  sword  were  the  distinctive 
parts  of  the  dress  of  the  private  gentleman.  Cahcdlero 
de  capa  y  espada  was  the  man  about  town  of  our  own 
Restoration  plays,  who  is  neither  great  noble,  church- 
man, nor  lawyer.  The  comedia  de  capa  y  espada  was 
then  the  genteel  comedy  of  Spain.  But  the  Dama,  the 
Golan,  the  Barba,  and  the  Gracioso  figure  in  every  kind 
of  play,  even  in  those  of  religion.  /  By  these  is  meant 
the  stage  drama  turning  on  some  religious  motive,  and 
not  the  auto  sacramental,  which  was  a  mystery  differ- 
ing from  those  of  the  Middle  Ages  only  in  this,  that  it 
was  written  by  men  of  letters  on  whom,  and  on  whose 
art,  the  Renaissance  had  had  its  influence.  In  the 
Romantic  plays  there  is  more  passion,  and  the  sword 
is  more  often  out  of  its  scabbard,  but  we  find  the  same 


FORMS   OF   THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  93 

types,  the  same  general  action.  Spain  produced  a 
certain  number  of  plays  approaching  our  own  comedy 
of  humours.  These  are  the  comedias  de  figuron.  La 
Verdad  Sospechosa  and  the  Lindo  Don  Diego  are  the 
best  known  examples.  But  here  again  the  "  humour  " 
— the  figuron — is  placed  in  the  midst  of  the  stock 
types  and  the  customary  action. 

To  show  what  these  types  and  this  action  were  in 
general  terms  would  be  easy  enough,  but  perhaps  a 
better,  and  certainly  a  more  entertaining,  method  is  to 
take  half-a-dozen  typical  plays,  and  to  give  such  an 
Typical  analysis  of  them  as  may  enable  the  reader 
examples.  to  appreciate  for  himself  that  skilful  con- 
struction of  plot  at  which  the  Spaniards  aimed,  and  to 
judge  how  far  it  is  true  that  however  much  the  subject 
differed,  the  dramatis  personal  did  not  greatly  vary. 
For  this  purpose  it  is  not  necessary  to  take  what  is 
best  but  what  is  most  characteristic.  I  have  selected 
as  an  example  of  the  comedy  of  lively  complicated 
action  the  Dama  Melindrosa,  which  may  be  translated 
*  My  Lady's  Vapours/  by  Lope  de  Vega ;  as  a  romantic 
play,  the  Tejedor  de  Segovia — '  The  Weaver  of  Segovia ' 
— by  Juan  Euiz  de  Alarcon;  as  a  religious  play,  the 
Condcnado  por  Desconfiado — 'Damned  for  want  of 
Faith ' — of  Tirso  de  Molina ;  for  the  play  which  has 
"  honour  "  for  its  motive,  the  A  Secreto  Agravio  Secreta 
Venganza — '  A  Secret  Vengeance  for  a  Hidden  Wrong ' 
— of  Calderon.  The  Dama  Melindrosa  draws  a  little 
towards  the  comedia  de  figuron,  but  it  is  none  the  less 
a  perfect  specimen  of  the  cloak-and-sword  comedy, 
and  a  good  example  of  Lope.    It  is  chosen  also  because 


94       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

it  possesses  a  plot  sufficiently  entangled  to  show  the 
Spanish  enredo  {i.e.,  tangle),  and  yet  not  so  complicated 
as  to  be  obscure  in  the  telling.  Specimens  of  the 
romantic,  and  religious,  play  might  have  been  easily 
found  in  Calderon,  but  to  show  the  general  quality  of 
a  literature,  we  must  not  confine  ourselves  to  the 
greater  men.  There  remain  the  auto  sacramental, 
and  the  short  interludes,  which  under  various  names 
surrounded,  and  enlivened,  the  comedia.  For  the  first 
we  must  go  to  Calderon,  and  none  seems  more  fit  to 
show  what  the  Eenaissance  had  done  with  these  sur- 
vivals of  the  Middle  Ages  than  the  Verdadero  Bios 
Fan — '  The  True  God  Pan.'  For  an  example  of  the 
smaller  pieces  we  can  take  the  Dos  Habladores — '  The 
Two  Chatterers ' — of  Cervantes,  who  excelled  in  this, 
and  only  in  this,  dramatic  form.1 

Belisa,  the  Dama  Melindrosa,  the  lady  with  the 
vapours,  of  Lope's  comedy,  is  the  daughter  of  a  rich 
LaDamaMeiin-  widow,  Lisarda,  and  she  has  a  brother, 
drosa.  jj0n  Juan.     The  brother  spends  his  nights 

serenading  ladies,  in  company  with  his  friend  Eliso, 
and  lies  in  bed  till  midday.  Belisa  has  hitherto  re- 
fused all  the  husbands  proposed  by  her  mother,  giving 
more  or  less  fantastical  reasons  in  each  case,  and  is  a 
very  airy  whimsical  young  person.  In  the  first  scene  of 
the  play  Lisarda  confides  her  troubles  with  her  chil- 
dren to  her  brother  Tiberio,  the  barba — beard,  or  old 

1  Those  who  wish  to  make  a  closer  acquaintance  with  the  minor 
forms  of  the  Spanish  play  may  be  referred  to  the  Entremeses,  Loaas, 

y  Jdcaras,  of  Don  Luis  Quihones  de  Benavente  ( ?-1652),  edited 

by  Don  C.  Rosell  in  the  Libros  de  Antano.     Madrid,  1872. 


FOEMS   OF   THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  95 

man — of  the  piece.  Lisarda  professes  her  desire  to 
get  her  children  married  and  settled  in  life,  in  order 
that  she  may  retire  to  the  country  with  one  gentle- 
woman and  a  slave,  there  to  bewail  her  lost  lord  (who, 
we  learn,  has  been  dead  for  about  a  year),  like  the 
tender  turtle  on  a  thorn.  Tiberio  pooh-poohs  his 
sister's  sentiments,  and  makes  the  unsympathetic  re- 
mark that  widows  generally  seem  to  find  solitude  a 
thorn,  to  judge  by  their  perpetual  fidgeting,  but  offers 
to  use  his  influence  to  persuade  Belisa  to  marry.  Then 
follows  a  scene  with  the  young  lady.  She  knows  she 
is  going  to  be  sermonised,  and  puts  on  all  her  airs  and 
graces.  A  chair  is  brought  for  Tiberio  and  cushions 
for  the  ladies,  who  squat  on  them  in  the  old  Spanish 
fashion.  Mme.  d'Aulnoy,  the  author  of  the  fairy 
tales,  who  came  to  Spain  as  wife  of  the  French 
Ambassador,  has  explained  how  intolerable  she  found 
this  attitude.  Belisa  provokes  her  uncle,  who  has  the 
usual  peppery  temper  of  the  barba,  into  expressing  a 
desire  to  box  her  ears,  but  will  accept  no  husband. 
To  this  party  enter  an  alguacil,  or  officer  of  police, 
with  an  escribano,  a  species  of  attorney  and  process- 
server.  We  learn  that  Lisarda  has  a  claim  on  her 
son's  friend  Eliso,  who  owed  her  husband  money,  and 
will  not  pay  it.  She  has  therefore  sued  out  a  writ, 
and  is  sending  the  officers  to  seize  a  prenda,  or  pledge, 
which  she  can  keep  or  sell  for  the  discharge  of  the 
debt,  if  Eliso  will  not  pay  what  he  owes. 

The  scene  now  changes  to  the  house  of  Eliso,  who 
is  found  discussing  with  his  servant  Fabio  the 
question   whether  it   is    better   to  pay   the   debt    or 


96       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

compound  by  marrying  Belisa,  with  her  vapours. 
His  conversation  is  broken  off  by  the  hurried  entry 
of  Felisardo,  sword  in  hand.  He  has  found  a  Na- 
varrese  cavalier  persecuting  Celia,  who  is  on  her 
way  home  from  church,  with  unwelcome  attentions. 
The  usual  duel  has  followed.  The  Navarrese  is  on 
the  pavement,  and  Felisardo  is  on  his  way  to  take 
sanctuary,  bringing  Celia  with  him  to  leave  her 
under  the  protection  of  Eliso.  Of  course  Eliso  be- 
haves like  a  gentleman,  orders  his  front  door  to  be 
shut  in  case  the  police  -  officers  are  in  pursuit,  and 
gives  his  friends  refuge.  He  persuades  the  two  to 
disguise  themselves  in  the  holiday  dresses  of  his 
Morisco  slaves,  Pedro  and  Zara,  who  are  absent  on 
his  estate.  Meanwhile  Fabio  reports  that  there  are 
police-officers  below,  and  is  sent  down  with  orders 
to  delay  them  as  long  as  he  can.  Eliso  has  a  soliloquy 
on  the  hazards  of  love,  in  the  form  of  a  half-burlesque 
sonnet  in  which  all  the  last  words  are  esdrtijulo,  ac- 
cented on  the  antepenult.  At  last  the  alguacil  is 
admitted,  deeply  angered  by  the  delay,  and  announces 
that  he  has  come  to  serve  Lisarda's  writ.  Eliso  is 
relieved,  and  tells  him  to  take  what  he  likes — and  he 
takes  the  two  supposed  slaves.  The  scene  now  returns 
to  Lisarda's  house.  She  is  much  pleased  by  the  intel- 
ligence of  the  alguacil,  and  the  attractive  appearance 
of  the  supposed  Pedro  and  Zara.  Belisa,  too,  is  im- 
pressed by  the  gallant  bearing  of  Felisardo,  who  enters 
into  the  game  with  spirit.  Meanwhile  Don  Juan  is  at 
last  up.  He  finds  Celia  among  the  servants,  and  on 
learning  who  she  is  supposed  to  be,  observes  that  his 


FORMS   OF   THE    SPANISH    DRAMA.  97 

friend  Eliso  was  wise  not  to  let  him  see  her.  Of 
course  he  makes  hyperbolical  love  to  her  at  once. 
Celia  is  not  pleased  at  the  admiration  of  Lisarda's 
female  servants  for  Felisardo,  and  he  is  jealous  of 
Don  Juan.  And  so  the  first  act  ends.  Lope,  it  will 
be  seen,  has  carried  out  his  dramatic  scheme  so  far 
with  great  success.  He  has  introduced  his  persons, 
and  knitted  his  intrigue.  Everything  has  happened 
in  a  probable  way,  and  there  are  infinite  possibilities 
of  complications  and  cross  purposes. 

The  second  act  opens  with  Belisa's  confession  of  her 
love  for  the  supposed  Pedro.  It  is  made  to  the  indis- 
pensable confidante,  who,  as  a  matter  of  course,  is  her 
servant  Flora,  the  counterpart  of  the  gr  arioso,  and  the 
soubrette  of  the  French  comedy.  Belisa  speaks  largely 
in  infantile  little  lines  of  six  syllables.  She  explains 
and  excuses  her  own  melindres  at  considerable  length, 
and  asks  Flora  how  to  escape  from  a  love  which  she 
feels  is  disgraceful,  and  half  considers  as  a  punishment 
for  her  whims.  Flora  makes  the  ferocious  suggestion 
that  she  should  insist  on  having  Pedro  branded  on  the 
face,  after  the  manner  of  runaway  slaves.  This  was  a 
rebus  formed  of  the  letter  s,  pronounced  "  es,"  and  a 
nail — clavo — which  together  make  the  word  esclavo,  a 
slave.  The  object  of  this  precious  device  is  to  kill 
Belisa's  love  by  degrading  its  object.  The  melin- 
drosa  hesitates,  but  finally  takes  her  servant's  counsel, 
and  when  her  mother,  who  is  as  much  in  love  with 
Pedro  as  herself,  declines,  threatens  hysterics.  Lis- 
arda  in  despair  applies  to  Tiberio,  who  advises  that 
the  rebus  should  be  painted  on  the  faces  of  the  slaves, 


98       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

which  will  quiet  Belisa,  and  do  no  harm.  In  the 
meantime  Eliso  pays  a  visit  to  Lisarda.  He  has  at 
last  made  up  his  mind  to  become  Belisa's  suitor.  The 
mother  warns  him  of  her  daughter's  humours,  but 
promises  her  help,  insisting,  however,  that  he  must 
make  her  a  present  of  the  slaves,  although  he  has  now 
satisfied  the  debt.  Eliso,  who  knows  he  gives  nothing, 
consents  with  just  sufficient  appearance  of  reluctance 
to  provoke  the  lady's  wishes  still  further.  He  also 
drops  hints  that  the  slaves  are  not  what  they  seem. 
In  a  short  conversation  with  Felisardo,  Eliso  tells  him 
that  the  Navarrese  still  lives,  though  in  danger,  that 
the  police  are  seeking  for  him  and  Celia,  and  that  they 
will  be  wise  to  stay  where  they  are.  They  agree,  and 
allow  the  infamatory  mark  to  be  painted  on  their 
faces.  The  play  need  no  longer  be  told  scene  by  scene, 
and  could  not  be  so  told  except  at  inconvenient  length. 
Lisarda  hankers  after  the  man  slave,  and  Don  Juan 
makes  furious  love  to  Celia.  Belisa  finds  her  love  is 
not  cured  by  the  supposed  branding  of  Pedro,  and  is 
perpetually  either  making  advances  to  him,  or  flying 
off  in  more  or  less  affected  hysterics.  Celia  for  her 
part  is  jealous  of  the  mother  and  daughter.  She  and 
her  lover  are  twice  surprised  in  talk,  and  have  to  use 
their  wits  to  escape  discovery.  There  is  no  small 
truth  in  the  part  Belisa  plays.  Lope  accepted  slavery 
as  a  matter  of  course,  and  was  writing  to  amuse,  not  to 
enforce  a  moral,  but  he  comes  very  near  the  best  pas- 
sages in  that  powerful  book  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin, — the 
scenes  which  follow  the  death  of  St  Clair.  Mrs 
Beecher  Stowe  wrote  to  prove  that  slavery  makes  it 


FORMS   OF   THE   .SPANISH    DRAMA.  99 

possible  for  a  weak  self-indulgent  nature  to  be  hor- 
ribly brutal  in  act.  Belisa  is  not  allowed  to  go  beyond 
whims.  The  second  act  ends  by  her  insisting  that 
an  iron  collar  shall  be  put  on  Pedro's  neck,  which 
makes  an  effective  "  curtain,"  and  no  doubt  left  the 
audience  highly  excited  as  to  what  was  coming  next. 

The  third  act  opens  with  a  scene  between  Lisarda 
and  Eliso,  who  reproaches  her  with  ill-treating  the 
slaves,  and  repeats  his  warning  that  they  are  not  what 
they  appear  to  be.  This  only  excites  Lisarda  in  her 
determination  to  marry  Pedro.  Then  Eliso  is  angered 
by  Don  Juan's  servant  Carrillo,  the  gracioso  of  the 
piece,  who  tells  him  that  the  slave  is  making  love  to 
Belisa.  With  a  want  of  scruple  too  common  with  the 
Spanish  galan,  he  eggs  on  Don  Juan  to  persevere  in 
his  pursuit  of  Celia.  Belisa  also  has  begun  to  have 
her  suspicions  as  to  the  real  character  of  the  slaves, 
but  cannot  believe  that  a  free  man  and  woman  would 
allow  themselves  to  be  branded.  Now  follows  a  set  of 
scenes  hovering  between  farce  and  melodrama.  In  a 
more  than  usually  exalted  state  of  the  vapours,  Belisa 
pretends  to  faint,  in  order  that  Pedro  may  carry  her 
to  her  room.  She  has  first  given  him  a  ring.  Pedro 
is  not  a  little  embarrassed,  but  finally  takes  her  up 
with  disgusted  resignation,  and  is  about  to  carry  her 
to  her  room,  when  Celia  comes  in,  and  "  makes  him  a 
scene  of  jealousy."  Supposing  the  melindrosa  to  be 
insensible  they  address  one  another  by  their  true 
names,  and  say  some  uncomplimentary  truths  of 
Belisa.  At  last  Felisardo  puts  Belisa  down  on  a 
sofa,  as  Celia  insists  upon  it,  gives  his  lady-love  the 


100       EUROPEAN    LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

ring  as  a  proof  of  his  loyalty,  and  walks  off  to  the 
stable.  Belisa  is  furious,  puzzled,  but  still  doubtful. 
In  a  fit  of  rage  she  accuses  Celia  of  stealing  the  ring, 
and  the  dama  is  in  some  danger  of  learning  that  it  is 
perilous  to  play  the  part  of  slave.  She  is,  of  course, 
rescued  from  the  officious  Carrillo,  who  is  eager  to 
inflict  the  punishment  ordered  by  his  mistress,,  by 
Don  Juan.  The  young  gentleman  is  in  high  indig- 
nation, and  swears  that  lie  will  marry  the  slave.  His 
mother,  who  means  to  do  the  same  with  Pedro,  is  not 
on  that  account  the  less  angry  with  him.  Being  now 
thoroughly  tired  of  Don  Juan's  rebellion  and  Belisa's 
whims,  she  begs  the  help  of  Tiberio  to  bring  about  her 
marriage  with  the  slave.  The  helpful  Tiberio  has  a 
resource.  He  has  seen  a  gentleman  named  Felisardo 
about  the  court  who  is  wonderfully  like  Pedro.  Let 
the  slave  be  dressed  as  a  gentleman  and  introduced 
as  Lisarda's  proposed  husband.  In  the  meantime  Don 
Juan  has  plotted  with  Eliso  that  Celia  shall  be  helped 
to  resume  her  true  place,  when  he  will  of  course  marry 
her,  and  present  his  mother  with  the  accomplished 
fact.  After  a  well -handled  passage  of  mutual  re- 
proaches between  mother  and  daughter,  there  comes 
a  stage  device  which  the  play-goer  will  recognise  as 
now  worn  threadbare,  but  which  is  always  effective. 
Lisarda  decides  that  when  Tiberio  returns  with  Felis- 
ardo, whom  she  still  believes  to  be  the  slave  Pedro, 
she  will  put  out  the  light  by  an  affected  accident,  and 
seize  the  opportunity  to  make  a  declaration  of  love. 
What  follows  need  hardly  be  told.  The  light  is  put 
out.     Everybody  says  the  wrong  thing  to  everybody, 


FORMS    OF   THE   SPANISH   DHAMA.  101 

and  when  the  candles  are  lit  again  the  play  is  over. 
Eelisardo  is  married  to  Celia,  who  arrives  at  the  right 
moment.  Belisa,  her  vapours  being  no  longer  heeded, 
consents  to  marry  Eliso.  Carrillo  is  paired  off  with 
Flora.  Lisarda  declares  herself  satisfied,  and  so  the 
play  being  played  out,  the  puppets  return  to  their 
box. 

Here,  it  will  be  allowed,  is  a  play — and  it  is  one 
of  many — which  may  well  have  amused  a  Spanish 
audience  for  an  afternoon.  We  may  confess  that  this 
was  its  main  purpose.  Yet  it  is  also  amusing  to  read. 
Lope,  indeed,  wrote  well.  His  verse  in  its  various 
forms,  including  blank  verse,  which  has  been  com- 
paratively little  written  by  other  Spaniards,  is  accom- 
plished, when  haste  did  not  make  him  careless ;  and 
it  has  the  qualities  of  the  prose  of  our  own  Vanbrugh 
— straightforward  simplicity  and  natural  ease.  The 
actors  must  have  found  it  pleasant  to  learn.  His 
characters,  again,  have  a  respectable  measure  of 
general  truth  to  human  nature.  They  are  not,  in- 
deed, the  living  persons  we  meet  in  Moliere  and 
Shakespeare.  Even  Belisa  is  only  a  dama  with 
melindres,  and  as  Celia  is,  so  his  other  damas  are ; 
nor  does  one  galan,  gracioso,  or  barba  differ  essentially 
from  another.  Yet  they  are  true,  with  the  measure  of 
truth  possible  to  conventional  types,  and  their  doings 
are  lively.  The  doings  are  always  the  essential  thing. 
Whatever  literary  merit  Lope's  play  may  have,  it  is 
always  strictly  subordinate  to  the  purely  theatrical 
purpose,  to  the  necessity  of  pleasing  an  audience  by 
a  lively  action  which  must  be  full  of  surprises  in  the 


102      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

details,  but  always  intelligible  in  the  general  lines. 
Of  this  purely  theatrical  art  he  was  a  master.  He 
knew  how  to  bring  about  a  good  situation,  how  to 
lead  up  to  an  effective  ending  to  his  act,  how  to  make 
the  wildly  improbable  look  probable  on  the  boards. 
In  so  far  he  is  very  modern.  The  popular  play  of 
to-day,  the  French  comedy  of  quijproquo,  is  only  Lope's 
comedy  of  intrigue  in  modern  trappings.  It  is  never 
better  in  these  qualities  than  his  are  at  their  best.  He 
had  discovered  all  the  devices  which  the  playwright 
finds  more  effective,  and  much  easier  to  produce,  than 
passion,  or  thought,  or  poetry.  And  he  did  at  least 
present  them  in  poetic  form.  He  was  the  most  poetic 
of  playwrights,  and  the  ancestor  of  all  who  write 
merely  for  the  stage,  whose  aim  it  is  to  amuse,  and  to 
move  by  direct  appeal  to  the  eye,  and  the  laughter,  or 
tears,  which  lie  near  the  surface. 

The  enredo  supplied  the  canvas  on  which,  or  the 
background  against  which,  the  Spanish  dramatist  had 
to  place  whatever  romantic,  religious,  or  other  figure 
or  action  he  wished  to  present  to  his  audience.  In 
EiTejedor  the  Tejedor  de  Segovia — 'The  Weaver  of 
de  Segovia.  Segovia '  —  of  Alarcon  we  have  romance 
of  the  most  approved  type,  the  story  of  a  gentleman 
who  is  driven  by  oppression  to  become  a  Robin  Hood, 
a  "  gallant  outlaw,"  and  who  finally  earns  pardon,  and 
restoration  to  his  honours,  by  service  against  the  Moor. 
This  is  Don  Fernando  Ramirez,  whose  father  has  been 
unjustly  put  to  death  by  the  king  Don  Alfonso,  at  the 
instigation  of  the  favourite,  the  Marques  Suero  Pelaez. 
It  is  supposed  that  Fernando  has  also  been  killed,  but 


FORMS   OF   THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  103 

he  is  living  disguised  as  a  weaver  at  Segovia,  with  his 
dama  Teodora.  A  sister,  Dona  Ana  Eamirez,  is  living 
in  retirement  near  the  town  with  a  servant,  Florinda. 
She  is  in  love  with  the  Count  Don  Julian,  son  of 
Suero  Pelaez,  who  neglects  her,  and  is  tired  of  her. 
Don  Julian  has  caught  sight  of  Teodora,  and  has  fallen 
in  love  with  her  in  the  usual  fire-and-flanies  style.  He 
is  determined  to  carry  her  off,  and  when  the  play 
opens,  is  prowling  about  the  weaver's  house  with  his 
servant  Fineo.  Don  Julian  is  convinced  that  a  mere 
mechanic  will  not  dare  to  resist  the  son  of  so  powerful 
a  man  as  Suero  Palaez.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the 
weaver  is  absent,  and  Teodora  is  alone  in  the  house 
with  the  servant  Chinchon,  the  gracioso  of  the  piece, 
and  an  accomplished  specimen  of  the  greed,  cowardice, 
brag,  and  low  cunning  proper  to  the  type.  A  moder- 
ately experienced  reader  of  romance  sees  at  once  what 
the  course  of  the  story  must  be.  The  count  en- 
deavours to  gain  admittance.  Chinchon  the  coward 
proves  no  protection.  He  is  rather  a  traitor,  and 
Teodora  is  assailed  by  the  count,  when  the  weaver 
returns.  Fernando  takes  a  high  line  with  Don  Julian, 
and  when  the  count  endeavours  to  carry  things  with 
a  high  hand,  shows  that,  weaver  as  he  appears  to  be, 
he  can  use  a  sword  like  a  gentleman.  The  count  and 
his  servant  are  ignominiously  driven  into  the  streets. 
Then  the  storm  breaks  on  the  weaver.  He  is  im- 
prisoned, and  Teodora  has  to  fly  to  hiding.  In  prison 
the  weaver  finds  Don  Garceran  de  Miranda,  and 
various  others,  who  form  the  raw  material  of  a  model 
band  of  brigands.     The  courage  and  craft  of  Fernando 


104      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

aiding,  they  all  break  out  and  take  to  "  the  sierra  " — 
the  hillside — which  is  the  Spanish  equivalent  of  our 
green  wood.  Through  many  adventures,  each  coming 
one  out  of  the  other,  all  the  personages  playing  their 
part  with  that  sense  of  the  theatre  which  Lope  had 
conveyed  to  his  countrymen,  Don  Fernando  works 
back  to  his  own,  and  to  revenge.  It  is  a  Eobin  Hood 
story,  told  by  a  Spaniard  for  the  stage,  and  with 
Spanish  types. 

There  are  individual  scenes  of  the  best  Spanish 
romance.  One  is  that  in  which  Suero  Pelaez,  the 
barba,  the  personification  of  austere  Castilian  honour 
and  loyalty,  reproaches  his  son  with  his  disorderly 
life.  Suero  Pelaez  is  the  typical  pere  noble,  the  heavy 
father  of  the  stage,  comparable  for  rigid  loftiness  of 
sentiment  to  the  Ruy  Gomez  of  Hernani.  Victor 
Hugo  would  have  done  the  scene  magnificently,  and 
as  Alarcon  wrote  it,  it  will  stand  comparison  with  the 
best  of  the  French  romantic  plays.  In  another  scene 
Teodora  and  Fernando  are  prisoners  to  the  count,  and 
she  saves  her  lover  by  pretending  to  betray  him.  She 
asks  to  be  allowed  to  kill  him,  and  when  supplied  with 
a  sword  for  that  atrocious  purpose,  cuts  his  bonds  and 
gives  him  the  weapon — a  coup  de  thMtre  repeated  with 
more  or  less  disguise  many  thousands  of  times,  but 
unfailing  in  its  effect.  In  a  more  thoroughly  Spanish 
scene,  Fernando  forces  the  count  to  do  justice  to  his 
sister,  Dona  Ana,  by  promising  to  marry  her,  and 
having  so  salved  the  honour  of  his  family,  kills  him 
in  fair  fight.  Dona  Ana  displays  the  philosophy  rarely 
wanting  in   the  second  dama  at  the  end   of  a  play. 


FORMS    OF   THE  SPANISH   DRAMA.  105 

While  Don  Julian  was  alive,  honour  required  her  to 
insist  on  marriage ;  but  now  that  he  is  dead,  and 
she  has  been  righted,  she  is  quite  prepared  to  marry 
Don  Garceran,  who  has  gallantly  played  his  part  as 
Patroclus,  Achates,  Horatio,  Amyas  Leigh's  Lieuten- 
ant Cary,  or  Jack  Easy's  friend  Gascoigne — in  short, 
hero's  right-hand  man.  It  is  not  King  Lear,  or  even 
Phfolre,  but  it  is  very  amusing  reading,  made  of  such 
stuff  as  romance  is  made  of  at  all  times. 

With  the  play  on  a  religious  motive  we  come  to  what 
is  far  more  alien  to  ourselves.  In  Tirso  de  Molina's 
ei  c  nd  n  do  C°ndenado  Por  Desconfiado  wTe  have  some- 
porDescon-  thing  which,  at  any  rate  in  such  a  form 
as  this,  is  unknown  on  the  modern  stage. 
Paul  the  hermit  is  a  man  of  thirty,  who  has  fled 
from  the  world  ten  years  ago,  and  is  living  in  the 
practice  of  every  austerity.  Inappropriate  as  it  may 
seem,  he  has  with  him  a  servant,  Pedrisco,  the  gracioso 
of  the  piece,  who  differs  in  nothing  from  others  of  the 
same  function  on  the  Spanish  stage.  In  the  first  scene 
Pedrisco  is  absent  begging  for  the  herbs  on  which  the 
hermit  lives.  The  play  opens  with  a  soliloquy  by 
Paul,  which  is  a  rapid  theatrical  equivalent  for  Lord 
Tennyson's  monologue  of  St  Simeon  Stylites.  The 
hermit  is  troubled  by  no  doubts  on  any  point  of  faith, 
but  he  is  racked  by  anxiety  to  feel  assured  that  his 
austerities  have  earned  him  salvation,  and  we  see  that 
he  has  yielded  to  spiritual  pride.  After  giving  ex- 
pression to  his  doubts  and  fears,  through  which  there 
pierces  an  aggrieved  sense  that  heaven  owes  him  sal- 
vation, Paul  retires  to  his  cave.     We  have  a  buffoon 


106      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

interlude  from  Pedrisco,  who  complains  of  his  diet 
(the  gracioso  is  ever  a  glutton),  and  tells  us  that  he 
smuggles  in  something  more  substantial  than  herbs  for 
his  own  consumption.  Then  he  goes  into  his  cave  to 
eat,  and  Paul  returns  in  great  agitation.  He  has 
dreamt,  and  in  his  dream  has  been  taken  to  the 
judgment-seat  of  heaven.  There  he  has  seen  his  good 
deeds  weighed  against  his  evil,  and  the  good  have 
proved  by  far  the  lighter.  He  breaks  into  a  wild 
prayer  for  assurance,  for  a  sign,  which  is  by  far  the 
finest  passage  of  verse  in  the  play.  It  is  strictly 
according  to  tradition  that  he  should  be  heard  by  the 
enemy  of  mankind.  The  devil  tells  us  that  he  is  em- 
powered to  tempt  the  holy  man,  that  vulgar  temp- 
tations have  failed,  but  that  now  Paul  is  wavering  in 
his  faith  in  the  divine  mercy,  and  he  will  tempt  him 
in  another  way.  A  disappointment  now  awaits  the 
reader,  who  expects  a  scene  of  temptation,  and  gets  a 
device  for  helping  on  the  action.  Satan  appears  in 
the  shape  of  an  angel,  and  tells  Paul  to  go  to  Naples. 
There  at  a  certain  place  near  the  harbour  he  will  meet 
one  Enrico,  son  of  Anareto.  He  is  to  watch  that  man, 
for  as  the  fate  of  Enrico  is,  so  will  his  own  be,  the 
devil  being  a  liar  from  the  beginning.  Paulo  won- 
ders, but  obeys,  and  departs  with  Pedrisco  for  Naples. 
There  we  precede  him,  and  find  ourselves  with  two 
gentlemen  at  the  door  of  Celia,  who  is  a  courtesan. 
From  the  conversation  of  these  two  we  learn  of  her 
beauty,  her  rapacity,  her  great  wit,  and  many  accom- 
plishments, as  also  that  she  is  devoted  to  one  Enrico, 
a  ruffler,  gambler,  and  bully,  who  beats  and  robs  her. 


FORMS   OF   THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  107 

One  of  the  two  gentlemen  has  never  seen  her,  and 
after  due  warning  from  his  friend,  it  is  decided  that 
they  shall  go  in  on  pretence  of  asking  Celia,  who  is 
a  poetess,  for  some  love  verses  to  be  sent  to  their 
damas.  They  go  in,  bearing  gifts,  and  then  Enrico 
bursts  in  with  his  follower  Galvan.  Enrico  plays  the 
bully  to  perfection,  drives  off  the  two  gentlemen,  and 
seizes  their  gifts  to  Celia,  who  wheedles  and  adores 
him  as  the  most  valiant  of  men.  All  this  scene  is 
full  of  vigour,  and  is  written  with  astonishing  gusto. 
When  placated  by  Celia,  Enrico  promises  her  a  feast 
on  her  own  money,  and  sending  for  friends,  they  go 
out  to  the  sea-shore  by  the  harbour.  Here  Paulo  is 
waiting,  as  he  was  directed  by  the  fiend.  There  is  a 
scene,  very  intelligible,  and  not  at  all  ridiculous  to  a 
Spanish  audience  of  the  day,  in  which  Paulo  proves 
his  Christian  humility  by  throwing  himself  on  the 
ground  and  telling  Pedrisco  to  trample  on  him.  Then 
Enrico  and  his  riotous  party  burst  on  the  scene. 
Enrico  has  just  tossed  a  troublesome  old  beggar  into 
the  sea  out  of  pure  wickedness,  and  is  in  jovial  spirits. 
He  glories  and  drinks  deep,  bragging  of  his  own  sins, 
and  extorting  the  admiration  of  Celia  and  the  sub- 
ordinate scoundrels  who  form  the  party.  This,  again, 
is  an  excellent  scene,  and  not  untrue  to  nature.  Paul 
recognises  the  man  with  whose  fate  his  own  is  bound 
up,  and  is  horrified.  He  feels  convinced  that  this 
man  can  never  be  saved,  and  revolts  at  thinking  that 
after  all  his  austerities  he  is  to  be  lost.  In  an  ex- 
plosion of  passion,  not  unhuman,  and  certainly  very 
southern,  he  decides  that  he  too  will  lead  a  life  of 


108      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

crime. and  make  the  world  fear  one  who,  "although 
just,"  has  been  condemned. 

So  ends  the  first  act.  In  the  second  and  third  we 
have  the  perpetual  contrast  between  the  two  men. 
Paulo  has  become  a  brigand,  but  is  still  in  trouble 
about  his  soul.  He  has  a  warning  by  an  angel,  who 
appears  in  the  shape  of  a  shepherd-boy,  and  tells  him 
a  parable  of  the  lost  sheep.  Paulo  understands,  but 
still  his  doubts  haunt  him.  Meanwhile  we  learn, 
with  some  surprise,  that  Enrico  has  one  virtue  amid 
his  thousand  crimes — a  tender  affection  for  his  old 
father.  He  refuses  to  kill  an  aged  man,  though  he 
has  taken  pay  to  kill  him.  The  old  man's  resem- 
blance to  his  father  disarms  Enrico.  When  reproached 
by  his  employer  he  kills  him.  He  has  now  to  fly 
Naples,  and  in  order  to  escape  pursuit  has  to  take 
to  the  water.  Before  plunging  in  he  prays  for  God's 
mercy,  for  though  a  sinner  Enrico  has  never  doubted. 
Considerations  of  time  and  space  troubled  the  Spanish 
dramatist  but  little.  Enrico  swims  from  Naples  to 
the  place  where  Paulo  is  camped  with  his  band. 
He  falls  into  the  hands  of  the  ex-hermit.  Paulo 
now  conceives  a  hope.  If  he  can  find  that  Enrico 
is  repentant  there  will  be  a  chance  for  his  salvation. 
He  causes  his  prisoner  to  be  tied  to  a  tree  blindfold,  in 
order  that  he  may  be  shot  to  death,  and  then  resuming 
his  hermit's  dress,  exhorts  him  to  prepare  for  death. 
But  Enrico  will  not  go  beyond  a  general  acknowledg- 
ment that  the  divine  mercy  can  save  him  if  God  so 
pleases.  Of  confession  and  repentance  he  will  not 
hear  a  word,  but  is  in  all  respects  a  hardened  sinner. 


FORMS    OF   THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  109 

Paulo  is  again  plunged  into  despair,  and  repeats  his 
determination  to  exceed  the  crimes  of  Enrico,  "  since 
it  is  to  be  all  one  in  the  end."  The  words  are  trivial, 
but  they  contain  blasphemy  in  the  real  sense.  The 
close  of  the  play  finds  Paulo  still  revolving  his  weary 
doubt,  and  Enrico  in  a  dungeon  waiting  for  execution. 
Here  we  have  another  very  arbitrary  and  pointless 
scene  of  temptation.  The  fiend  shows  Enrico  a 
means  of  escape,  but  he  hears  voices  warning  him 
to  stay,  and  he  stays.  The  scene  has  no  purpose,  for 
the  devil  makes  no  attack  on  the  prisoner's  faith,  and 
Enrico  remains  still  an  unbending  sinner.  At  last  he 
yields  to  the  prayers  of  his  old  father,  confesses,  and 
makes  an  edifying  end.  In  the  last  scene,  while 
Paulo  soliloquises,  the  soul  of  Enrico  is  borne  to 
heaven  by  two  angels.  But  Paulo  will  not  believe 
that  so  great  a  sinner  can  have  been  saved.  He 
does  not,  it  is  true,  see  the  vision,  and  has  only  the 
word  of  Pedrisco  for  Enrico's  pious  end.  Then  Paulo 
is  killed  by  soldiers  who  are  hunting  him  down. 
Flames  are  seen  round  his  dead  body,  and  his  voice  is 
heard  announcing  that  he  is  lost  for  ever,  "  por  des- 
confiado,"  as  one  who  did  not  trust  God's  mercy. 

The  morality  and  doctrine  of  this  play  need  not 
concern  us  here,  all  the  more  because  they  are  not 
unfamiliar.  There  is  some  virtue  in  a  name,  for  if 
the  Maestro  Tirso  de  Molina  had  called  his  play 
1  Justification  by  Faith,'  as  he  well  might,  he  would 
have  been  in  peril  of  ending  at  the  stake.  Head 
of  a  house  of  Nuestra  Sefiora  de  la  Merced  Calzada 
at  Soria,  as  he  was,  his  play  might  pass  for  an  illus- 


110      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

tration  of  Luther's  much -debated  "pecca  fortiter." 
The  purely  literary  interest  of  the  piece  is  great. 
The  scenes  filled  with  the  crimes  and  violence  of 
Enrico  are  written  with  the  greatest  brio.  Indeed 
this  venerable  churchman  Gabriel  Tellez  excelled  in 
drawing  types,  and  more  especially  a  type  of  woman, 
of  the  simple,  sensuous,  and  passionate  order.  He 
appears  to  have  had  a  strong  sympathy  with  them, 
and  a  belief,  less  monastic  than  sound,  that  there  was 
something  better  in  their  unfettered  loyalty  to  nature 
than  in  the  coward  virtue  of  those  who  fly  the  battle. 
His  Enrico  is  a  better  fellow  from  the  first  than  the 
hermit.  There  is  a  manfulness  about  him  which  is 
more  hopeful  than  the  self-seeking,  conventional  piety 
of  Paulo.  Whether  Tirso  de  Molina  meant  so  much 
or  not,  his  ^ost  hermit  is  a  vigorous  rough  sketch  of 
the  stamp  of  man  who  is  not  essentially  good,  but  only 
very  much  afraid  of  hell-fire,  and  abjectly  eager  to 
escape  it  by  acting  according  to  rule.  The  play,  it  will 
be  seen,  does  not  differ  essentially  from  the  accepted 
model  of  the  Spanish  drama.  There  is  no  develop- 
ment of  character.  The  action  is  imposed  on  the 
personages,  not  produced  by  them.  Enrico  does  not 
repent  in  any  real  sense  of  the  word.  He  only  makes 
a  pious  end,  because  his  father,  whom  he  loves,  per- 
suades him,  and  the  act  is  sufficient.  As  Paulo  is  at 
the  beginning  so  he  remains  to  the  end. 

With  the  play  on  the  "  point  of  honour  "  we  return 
to  more  familiar  regions.  There  are  hundreds  of 
modern  comedies  in  which  the  leading  personages  are 
the    lover,    the    wife,    and    the    husband.      But    the 


FORMS   OF   THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  Ill 

Spaniards  were  limited  in  their  treatment  of  the 
theme.  Neither  the  Church  nor  their  own  more  than 
half-oriental  sentiment  permitted  of  the  presentation 
of  adultery  as  sympathetic,  or  even  pardonable.  When 
they  took  this  subject  it  was  only  for  the  purpose  of 
The  play*  on  showing  by  a  lively  action  how  the  husband 
"honour."  vindicated  his  "honour."  This  honour, 
as  has  been  already  said,  lay  in  the  opinion  the  world 
had  of  him.  Don  Gutierre  Alfonso,  in  the  Mklico  de 
su  Honra,  kills  his  wife,  not  because  he  believes  her 
guilty,  but  because  she  has  been  pursued  by  a  lover 
and  he  will  not  have  it  said  that  this  has  been,  and 
that  he  has  not  avenged  himself.  To  do  this  effectually 
he  must  kill  both — the  innocent  woman  and  the  lover 
who  sought  to  seduce  her.  If  you  ask  Why  ?  he 
answers  "Mi  opinion" — which  means  not  what  I 
believe,  but  what  the  world  may  believe  of  me — 
leaves  me  no  choice.  If  I  do  not,  it  will  say,  There  is 
a  man  whose  wife  was  courted,  and  she  lives.  Where 
one  failed  another  may  succeed.  There  must  be  no 
doubt  of  my  "honour."  And  so  after  a  little  com- 
plaint over  the  tyranny  of  the  world  he  kills  her  with 
no  more  scruple  than  he  would  show  in  despatching  a 
worthless  horse  or  hound.  The  father,  or  brother,  who 
is  head  of  a  house,  is  under  the  same  obligation  as  the 
husband.  His  honour  is  concerned  in  seeing  that  his 
daughter  or  sister  gives  no  occasion  to  the  evil  tongues 
of  the  world.  In  Calderon's  very  typical  comedia  de 
capa  y  espada,  the  Dama  Duende — the  '  Fairy  Lady ' — 
the  heroine  is  a  young  and  beautiful  widow  living  with 
a  brother,  who  keeps  her  in  a  separate  set  of  rooms  in 


112      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

his  house,  and  will  not  let  her  be  seen.  She  accepts 
this  tyranny  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  has  no  more 
doubt  of  her  brother's  right  to  control,  and  if  she  is 
found  disobeying  his  orders,  to  punish  her,  than  she 
would  have  had  of  a  husband's.  How  far  all  this  gives 
a  true  picture  of  the  society  of  the  time  has  been  a 
debated  question.  It  certainly  was  the  picture  which 
that  society  liked  to  see  drawn  of  itself.  We  may 
accept  it  as  giving  no  more  than  an  exaggerated 
theatrical  representation  of  truth.  Spain  is  a  country 
of  the  Eoman  law,  which  allows  a  husband  to  kill  an 
unfaithful  wife  and  her  lover.  It  had  also  been 
affected  by  the  long  Moorish  dominion,  and  the  women 
of  all  ranks  were  certainly  less  independent  than  in 
England.  In  the  higher  classes  they  were,  and  in 
provincial  towns  where  ancient  customs  linger,  still 
are,  much  secluded. 

None  of   the  many  plays   in   which    Calderon  set 
forth   this   conception  of  honour  is  more  interesting 

than  A  Secreto  Agravio  Secreta  Venganza. 
Agravio  Secreta  The  action  takes  place  in  Portugal  in  the 

reign  of  Don  Sebastian,  just  before  that 
king  sails  on  his  disastrous  expedition  to  Africa. 
Don  Lope  de  Almeida,  a  Portuguese  gentleman  of 
great  fortune,  has  made  a  contract  of  marriage  with 
Dona  Leonora  de  Guzman,  a  Castilian  lady.  He  has 
never  seen  his  future  wife,  who  is  travelling  to  Lisbon 
under  the  escort  of  Don  Lope's  uncle,  Don  Ber- 
nardino, when  the  play  opens.  In  the  first  scene 
Don  Lope  informs  the  king  of  his  approaching  mar- 
riage, and  asks  leave  not  to  accompany  him  on  his 


FORMS   OF   THE   SPANISH    DllAMA.  113 

invasion  of  Morocco.  Then  after  a  brief  conversation 
with  his  servant  Manrique,  the  inevitable  gracioso,  he 
catches  sight  of  an  old  friend,  Don  Juan  de  Silva,  who 
comes  on  the  stage  poorly  dressed.  Don  Lope  greets 
him  warmly,  and  with  some  difficulty  learns  his  story. 
In  a  long  speech,  disfigured,  according  to  a  fault  too 
common  with  Calderon,  by  repetitions,  apostrophes, 
and  frigid  ornament,  Don  Juan  explains  that  at  Goa 
he  has  killed  the  son  of  the  governor,  and  has  been 
compelled  to  fly,  leaving  his  possessions,  and  is  a 
ruined  man.  The  provocation  was  great,  for  Manuel 
de  Sousa  had  given  him  the  lie.  Don  Juan  describes 
how  he  drew  at  once  and  killed  the  insulter  on  the 
spot — not,  be  it  observed,  in  a  duel,  but  by  a  thrust 
delivered  before  Sousa  could  draw  his  sword.  A 
passage  of  this  speech  is  very  necessary  for  the  under- 
standing of  the  play.  Don  Juan  breaks  into  an  out- 
cry against  "  the  tyrannical  error  of  men,"  the  folly  of 
the  world,  which  allows  honour  to  be  destroyed  by  a 
breath.  He  labours  the  point,  he  repeats  himself  to 
insist  that  his  honour  was  destroyed  when  he  was 
called  a  liar,  and  that  though  he  avenged  himself  in 
the  not  very  heroic  fashion  described,  still  it  will 
remain  the  fact  that  he  has  been  called  a  liar.  At 
a  later  stage  of  the  play  this  works.  For  the  present 
Don  Lope  gives  his  old  friend  refuge,  and  tells  him 
of  his  marriage.  We  are  now  introduced  to  Dona 
Leonor,  and  learn  that  she  has  had  a  lover,  in  all  honour 
of  course,  Don  Luis  de  Benavides.  He,  she  thinks, 
is  dead  on  an  expedition  to  Africa.  She  is  marrying 
because  she  is  forced,  but  will  carry  his  love  to  the 

H 


114      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

altar.  Beyond  that  it  shall  not  go,  for  it  would  touch 
her  honour.  But  Don  Luis  is  not  dead.  He  appears, 
and  makes  himself  known  to  her  by  pretending  to  be 
a  diamond-merchant,  and  sending  her  by  the  hand  of 
Don  Bernardino  a  ring  she  has  formerly  given  him. 
There  is  a  scene  of  reproach  and  explanation  between 
them,  but  Dona  Leonor  is  loyal  to  honour  so  far.  Her 
husband  now  comes  on  the  scene,  and  greets  her  with 
a  sonnet,  to  which  she  answers  with  another  of  double 
meaning.  It  is  addressed  both  to  Don  Luis  and  her 
husband — each  may  read  it  his  own  way,  the  first  as  a 
farewell,  the  second  as  a  promise  of  faithful  obedience. 
Don  Luis  decides  to  follow  her  to  Portugal  and  die  for 
his  love,  if  die  he  must.  So  the  personages  being  in- 
troduced, and  the  intrigue  on  foot,  the  first  act  ends. 

Now  Don  Luis  establishes  himself  near  the  house 
of  Don  Lope,  and  is  for  ever  prowling  about  the 
neighbourhood.  Don  Lope  sees  him,  and  wonders 
what  he  is  doing.  He  suspects  wrong  at  once,  for 
the  wronged  husband  of  these  plays  is  not  of  a  free 
and  noble  nature.  From  the  Spanish,  and  Italian, 
point  of  view  he  who  is  not  suspicious  is  credulous, 
and  a  fool.  Yet  he  will  not  believe  at  once,  his  wife 
being  what  she  is,  and  he  what  he  is.  He  shows  his 
confidence  by  asking  his  wife's  leave  to  join  the  king's 
expedition  to  Africa.  Leonor  gives  it,  and  he  sees 
no  danger.  But  his  friend  Don  Juan  does.  He 
drops  a  hint  that  it  is  strange  the  lady  should  be 
ready  to  part  with  her  husband  so  soon.  Again  Don 
Lope  is  set  speculating  and  wondering.  Meanwhile 
Don   Luis  has   been   persecuting   Leonor  for   a   last 


FORMS    OF   THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  115 

interview,  and  she  agrees  to  see  him  in  the  house, 
in  the  early  morning,  when  she  thinks  she  will  not 
be  discovered  by  her  husband.  Don  Luis  comes 
and  is  caught  by  Don  Lope,  but  invents  a  story  to 
the  effect  that  he  has  taken  refuge  in  the  house  to 
escape  an  enemy.  Don  Lope  pretends  to  believe, 
but  does  not,  and  warns  Don  Luis  plainly  enough, 
though  not  in  direct  terms,  that  he  will  permit  no 
trifling  with  his  honour.  Now  the  action  advances 
very  rapidly.  Don  Juan  warns  Don  Lope  by  putting 
the  supposed  case  of  a  man  who  knows  that  an  in- 
sulting word  has  been  used  of  a  friend,  who  has  not 
heard  it,  and  asking  whether  he  ought  to  be  told. 
Don  Lope  advises  silence,  because  the  more  an  offence 
to  honour  is  repeated,  the  worse.  But  he  knows  what 
is  meant,  and  makes  his  mind  up  to  take  a  secret 
revenge  for  the  secret  wrong  when  once  he  is  sure. 
The  king  refuses  to  take  him  to  Africa,  on  the  ground 
that  he  is  more  needed  in  his  own  house.  "Is  my 
wrong  already  so  public  ? "  is  Don  Lope's  comment. 
Now  a  very  skilful  use  is  made  of  Don  Juan's  story 
to  influence  the  mind  of  Don  Lope.  Don  Juan  hears 
himself  described  by  two  cavaliers  as  the  man  to 
whom  the  lie  was  given  by  Manuel  de  Sousa.  He 
draws,  kills  one,  and  drives  the  other  off.  Then,  in 
a  paroxysm  of  grief,  he  once  more  complains  to  Don 
Lope  of  the  injustice  which  compels  the  insulted  man 
to  bear  the  stigma  of  a  public  insult  for  ever.  This 
incident  confirms  Don  Lope's  intention  to  be  secret 
in  his  revenge,  lest  it  should  make  his  wrong  known. 
Fortune  throws  a  chance  in  his  way.     Dona  Leonor, 


116      EUROPEAN    LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

encouraged  by  what  she  believes  has  been  her 
escape  from  discovery,  invites  Don  Luis  to  meet 
her  on  the  other  side  of  the  river  in  a  garden.  He 
comes  on  the  stage  reading  her  letter,  and  meets 
Don  Lope.  The  husband  does  not  know  what  is  in 
the  letter,  but  he  suspects.  He  invites  Don  Luis  to 
cross  the  river  with  him,  pushes  off  without  the 
boatman,  stabs  his  enemy  in  mid-stream,  and  upsets 
the  boat.  Then  he  swims  ashore  to  the  garden 
where  his  wife  is  waiting  for  Don  Luis.  To  her  he 
tells  a  story  of  an  accident,  and  gives  her  the  name  of 
the  Castilian  gentleman  who  has  perished.  Leonor 
faints,  and  thus  confirms  Lope's  belief  that  she  meant 
to  betray  him.  He  pretends  that  her  anxiety  was  for 
himself ;  but  that  night  he  fires  his  house,  strangles  his 
wife  in  the  confusion,  and  appears  from  among  the 
flames  bearing  her  body  in  his  arms,  pretending  that 
she  has  been  stifled  by  the  smoke.  The  scene  be- 
tween husband  and  wife  is  not  given.  At  the  end  he 
tells  the  king  what  has  happened  as  to  the  death 
of  Don  Luis,  and  says  that  being  no  longer  needed 
in  his  own  house  he  is  ready  to  sail  for  Africa.  Don 
Sebastian  approves  of  his  hidden  vengeance  for  the 
secret  wrong,  and  we  are  left  to  suppose  that  Don 
Lope  goes  to  perish  at  Alcazar  el  Quebir. 

This  is  a  powerful  drama,  and  a  good  example  of 
Calderun's  command  of  stage  effect^  It  is  written  in 
the  finished  poetic  form  with  which  he  replaced  the 
free-flowing  dialogue  of  Lope_de_Vega.  The  defect  of 
"tnTs  lay  in  the  temptation  it  afforded  to  redundancy 
and   undramatic    ornament,   but   it   has   a   sparkling 


FORMS   OF   THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  117 

icy  beauty  of  its  own.  There  is  no  development, 
even  very  little  play,  of  character.  The  interest  lies 
in  the  consistent  working  of  a  fierce,  sullen,  suspicious 

jealousy.        

"""TEe  AiUo  Sacramental  is  very  Spanish,  very  remote 
from  usT  These  mysteries  were  performed  during  the 
T&eAuto  month  containing  the  feast  of  Corpus 
sacramental,  Chris  ti  in  the  streets,  not  in  the  theatres, 
which  were  shut  at  this  time,  but  they  were  acted  by 
professional  actors.  "  Andar  en  los  carros  " — to  go  in 
the  cars — was  the  regular  phrase  used  by  the  actors 
for  this  form  of  their  work.  The  cars  were  elaborate 
structures,  covered,  but  capable  of  being  opened  to 
show  scenes,  and  of  letting  down  drawbridges  which 
served  as  the  stage.  They  were  taken  to  different 
parts  of  the  town,  so  that  performances  might  be  given 
in  the  squares,  or  before  the  houses  of  distinguished 
people. 

The  True  God  Pan  may  represent  for  us  what  the 
Auto  Sacramental  had  become  in  Calderon's  hands 
when  his  genius  was  at  its  fullest  development.1 
Calderon  was  fond  of  taking  classical  myths  for  his 
oMtos,  and  treating  them  as  symbols  of  things  to  come 
since  fulfilled.  He  used  the  story  of  Psyche  and 
Cupid,  and  also  the  Andromeda.  The  application 
of  the  myth  of  Pan  to  Christianity  was  not  un- 
common in  the  Renaissance.  Pan  in  Spanish  means 
"  bread,"  and  the  auto  was   especially  meant  to  set 

1  Vol.  v.  of  Autos  Sacramcntales  de  Don  P.  Calderon,  published  by 
Don  Juan  Fernandez  de  Apontes,  Madrid,  1757-1760 — five  years  be- 
fore the  public  performance  of  autos  was  forbidden  by  Charles  III. 


118      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

forth  the  mystery  of  the  Sacrament.  This  play  on 
words  is  the  key  to  the  whole  auto.  If  the  reader 
thinks  the  conceit  puerile,  and  of  more  than  dubious 
taste,  he  must  remember  that  he  is  asked  to  look 
not  at  what  would  please  us,  but  at  what  did  please 
the  Spaniards,  —  what  was  accepted  by  their  still 
mediaeval  simplicity  of  piety,  and  was  in  keeping 
^.  ^    with  their  love  for  playing  on  words.     First 

* — — — ■"'  came  thajga  or  praisp-  This  was  an  intro- 
ductory  piece,  sometimes  delivered  by  a  single  speaker, 
sometimes  containing  a  little  action.  It  was  common 
on  the  secular  stage,  but  had  no  necessary  connection 
with  the  piece  to  follow,  being  only  part  of  the  sur- 
roundings and  dependencies  of  the  comedia.  Cal- 
deron's  loa  was  a  regular  introduction  to  the  auto.  In 
The  True  God  Pan  there  are  five  personages  in  the  loa 
— History,  Poetry,  Fable,  Music,  and  Truth.  History, 
the  dama,  begins  by  announcing  that  in  this  time  of 
general  joy  it  becomes  her  to  speak,  since  she  by  the 
mouth  of  Paul  and  John  has  told  how  the  'Bread 
(Pan)  became  flesh,  and  the  Word  had  become  flesh. 
She  calls  in  Music  and  the  other  personages.  A  for- 
feit dance  takes  place — that  is  to  say,  all  sing  as  they 
dance,  and  each  who  makes  a  fault  is  called  upon  to 
pay  a  small  forfeit.  This  was,  and  is,  a  form  of  amuse- 
ment in  Spain.  The  songs  all  refer  to  the  mystery  of 
the  Sacrament,  and  the  faults  are  the  successive  de- 
partures of  Music,  Poetry,  and  the  others  from 
the  Catholic  truth.  Fable  promises  to  pay  her  forfeit 
by  telling  one  of  her  stories,  and  beginning  with  the 


FORMS   OF   THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  119 

Spanish  once  upon  a  time  —  "  Erase  que  se  era  "  — 
gives  an  allegorised  version  of  the  myth  of  Pan.  Poetry 
promises  an  auto  on  the  same  subject,  to  show  that  the 
heathen  had  foreknowledge  of  our  pure  truths,  but 
being  blind,  without  the  light  of  Faith,  applied  them 
to  their  own  False  Gods.  The  auto  shall  be  on  the 
True  God  Pan.  With  a  loyal  address  to  Charles 
the  Consoler — the  unhappy  Carlos  II.,  then  a  small 
boy,  before  whom  the  auto  was  performed — the  loa 
ends. 

The  personages  of  the  auto  are — Pan,  Night,  the 
Moon,  the  World,  Judaism,  Synagogue,  Heathenism, 
ei  verdadero  Idolatry,  Apostasy,  Malice,  Simplicity,  the 
Dios  Pan.  Fiend,  Faith,  a  child,  shepherds,  shepherd- 
esses, with  musicians  and  attendants.  Pan  comes  out 
of  a  tent,  and  begins  by  a  lyric  appeal  to  Night. 
Night  comes,  and  Pan  explains  that  his  birth  was  at 
Bethlehem,  which  in  Hebrew  means  house  of  grain, 
and  from  that  point  goes  on  to  allegorise,  in  a  fashion 
which  it  is  difficult  to  interpret,  out  of  its  own  proper 
language  of  piety  and  poetry,  without  offence.  He  asks 
Night  to  lead  him  to  the  Moon,  and  then  again  alle- 
gorises, explaining  that  she  is  Luna  in  heaven,  Diana 
on  earth,  and  Proserpine  in  hell,  therefore  the  type 
of  human  nature,  which  dwells  on  earth,  aspires  to 
heaven,  and  can  sink  to  the  infernal  regions.  Night 
refuses,  telling  him  that  all  the  country  is  ravaged  by 
a  monster  of  whom  Paul,  Chrysostom,  and  Saint  Aug- 
ustine speak.  Here  we  have  an  example  of  those  "  im- 
pertinences" which  excited  the  ridicule  of  Madame 


120      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

D'Aulnoy,  who  would,  no  doubt,  have  found  Ben  Jon- 
son's  masques  "  impertinent."  Pan  recognises  the  mon- 
ster as  "  Sin,"  and  announces  that  he  will  retire  to  the 
desert  while  the  Gentiles  sing  to  their  false  gods.  The 
last  words  are  taken  up  by  a  chorus,  and  we  have  now 
a  scene  at  the  altar  of  the  Moon.  Judaism,  Heathen- 
ism, Synagogue,  and  the  others  appear,  only  to  quarrel 
and  debate.  The  auto  goes  on,  with  constant  interludes 
of  singing  and  dancing.  The  monster  "  Sin  "  is  heard 
of,  ravaging  the  flocks.  All  prove  hireling  shepherds 
except  Pan,  who  appears  to  help  Luna  in  her  distress. 
There  is  a  scene  of  defiance  between  him  and  the 
Fiend,  quite  in  the  style  of  the  comedia  when  galan  is 
opposed  to  galan.  The  Fiend  flies,  leaving  the  trunk 
of  a  tree  with  which  he  meant  to  strike  down  Pan. 
The  comic  element  is  not  wanting.  Judaism  takes  up 
the  weapon  which  the  Fiend  has  dropped,  and  threat- 
ens Pan  with  it,  but  he  only  succeeds  in  knocking 
down,  and  killing,  Synagogue.  Then  he  carries  off  the 
body,  saying  in  an  aside  that  though  all  the  world 
knows  Synagogue  is  dead,  yet  he  will  always  consider 
him  as  alive.  Judaism  rejects  Pan,  and  Apostasy  will 
not  be  persuaded  that  Flesh  can  be  Bread.  Apostasy, 
of  course,  stands  for  the  heretics  who  will  not  accept 
the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation.  But  Heathenism 
is  persuaded,  and  Luna,  typifying  human  nature,  be- 
lieves. Pan  takes  her  as  "  spouse,"  and  both  ascend  to 
the  celestial  mansions. 

The  ciilrmirs — interlude  or  farce — was  by  nature  a 
slight    thing.  _  In   the   Dos   Habladores  — '  The    Two 


FORMS   OF   THE   SPANISH   DRAMA.  121 

Chatterers' — of  Cervantes  we  have  the  simple  story 
Los  Dos  of  a  gentleman  who  is  plagued  in  the 
iiabiadorcs.  Sfcreets  \)j  a  ragged  gabbler  of  insufferable 
fluency.  He  makes  several  attempts  to  shake  him 
off'  without  success,  but  at  last  sees  how  to  make 
use  of  him.  Sarmiento,  the  pestered  gentleman,  has 
a  talkative  wife.  He  takes  the  bore  home,  intro- 
duces him  as  a  poor  relation,  and  sets  him  at  her. 
Eoldan  the  chatterer  drives  the  woman  frantic  by 
torrents  of  talk  which  leave  her  no  chance  to  speak. 
The  merit  of  the  piece  on  the  stage  lay  no  doubt  in 
the  opportunity  it  presented  for  "  patter "  and  comic 
acting.  Yet  the  entremescs — not  this  one  only,  but  the 
whole  class  —  have  great  literary  interest  as  store- 
houses of  vivid,  richly  coloured,  familiar  Castilian. 

A  drama  which  flowered  for  a  century,  and  was  so 
productive  as  the  Spanish,  cannot  be  fully  illustrated 
by  six  examples.  Yet  these  may  serve  to  show  the 
reader  what  he  may  expect  to  find  there.  Much  he 
will  not  find,  or  will  find  only  in  passing  indications. 
Perfection  of  poetic  form  in  the  verse  is  too  rare ;  the 
more  than  human  beauty  of  the  Elizabethan  lyric, 
the  "  mighty  line,"  whether  of  Marlowe,  Shakespeare, 
or  Corneille,  the  accomplishment  of  Moliere  or  Racine, 
are  wanting.  The  personages  are  constantly  recurring 
types,  with  here  and  there  a  humour.  The  Juan 
Crespo  of  Calderon's  Alcalde  de  Zcdamea  stands  almost 
alone  among  the  characters  of  the  Spanish  stage  as  a 
being  of  the  real  world  fixed  for  us  by  the  poet.  What 
has  been  called  the  au  delh  of  Moliere,  and  what  is 


122      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

found  in  the  very  greatest  masters  —  the  something 
which  transcends  the  mere  action  before  us,  and  is 
immortally  true  of  all  human  nature — is  not  on  the 
Spanish  stage.  But  there  is  much  good  verse,  easy, 
with  a  careless  grace,  and  spirited  in  Lope,  or 
stately  with  a  peculiar  Spanish  dignity  in  Calderon ; 
there  is  a  fine  wind  of  romance  blowing  all  through, 
and  there  is  ingenious,  unresting,  yet  lucid  action.  If 
it  never  reaches  the  highest  level  of  our  Elizabethan 
drama,  neither  does  it  fall  to  the  vacant  horseplay 
which  is  to  be  found  side  by  side  with  the  tragedy 
of  Marlowe  or  Middleton.  And  though  this  essen- 
tially theatrical  drama  cannot  be  said  to  have  held 
the  mirror  up  to  nature,  yet  it  does  give  a  picture 
of  the  time  and  the  people,  adapted  and  coloured  for 
the  boards,  but  still  preserving  the  likeness  of  the 
original.  This  may  be  said  to  be  its  weakness. 
Spanish  dramatic  literature  is  so  much  a  thing  of 
Spain,  and  of  the  seventeenth  century,  that  it  must 
needs  appeal  the  less  on  that  account  to  other  peoples 
and  later  times.  None  the  less  the  spectacle  's  pic- 
turesque in  itself,  while  the  great  theatrical  dexterity 
of  the  Spanish  playwrights  will  always  make  their 
work  interesting  to  all  who  care  for  more  than  the 
purely  literary  qualities  of  drama.  The  religion  of  the. 
Spaniard  is  conspicuous  in  his  plays.  It  has  been 
said  that  Calderon  was  the  poet  of  the  Inquisition, 
and  if  this  is  not  said  as  mere  blame,  it  conveys  a 
truth.  That  solution  of  the  riddle  of  the  painful 
earth  which  A.  W.  Schlegel  professed  to  have  found 


FORMS   OF   THE   SPANISH    DRAMA.  123 

in  him,  is  no  doubt  only  the  teaching  of  the  mediaeval 
Church.  We  may  on  this  account  decline  very 
properly  to  receive  him  as  a  deeper  thinker  than 
Shakespeare,  but  that  teaching  of  the  Church,  to 
which  the  Inquisition  strove  to  confine  all  Spaniards, 
had  been  the  guide  and  consolation  of  all  civilised 
Europe.  To  have  given  it  a  lofty  poetical  expres- 
sion for  the  second  time,  as  Dante  had  for  the  first, 
was  no  contemptible  feat. 


124 


CHAPTER   V. 


SPANISH   PROSE   ROMANCE. 

PASTORALS  AND  SHORT   STORIES — THE    ORIGINAL  WORK  OF   THE   SPANIARD 
— THE     "LIBROS    DE     CABALLERIAS  " — THE      '  AMADIS    OP    GAUL  ' — 

FOLLOWERS  OF    '  AMADIS  OF  GAUL  ' INFLUENCE  AND   CHARACTER  OF 

THESE  TALES — THE  REAL  CAUSE  OF  THEIR  DECLINE — THE  CHARACTER 

OF   THE   "NOVELAS   DE    PICAROS  " THE    '  CELESTINA  ' — '  LAZARILLO 

DE  TORMtfS  ' — '  GUZMAN  DE  ALFARACHE  ' — THE  FOLLOWERS  OF  MATEO 
ALEMAN — QUEVEDO — CERVANTES — HIS  LIFE — HIS  WORK — THE  MINOR 
THINGS — '  DON  QUIXOTE.' 

The  mere  bulk  of  the  Spanish  stories  was  great, 
but  it  is  subject  to  many  deductions  before  we  can 
Pastoral*  <md  disentangle  the  permanently  important 
short  stories.  part.  Pastorals,  for  instance,  were  much 
written  in  Spain,  and  one,  the  Diana1  of  Jorge  de 
Montemayor  (1520  ?-15Gl  ?),  is  excellent  in  its  insipid 
kind.  But  they  were  and  could  be  only  echoes  of 
Sannazzaro.  In  estimating  the  literature  of  any 
nation  we  can  afford  to  pass  over  what  it  has  only 
taken  from  a  neighbour  with  a  notice  that  the  imita- 
tion was  made.     The  merit  of  creating  the  type,  be 

1  There  is  a  pretty  and  not  uncommon  edition  of  the  Diana  pub- 
lished at  Madrid  by  Villalpando  in  1795. 


SPANISH    PROSE   ROMANCE.  125 

it  great  or  little,  belongs  to  the  original.  Even  when 
an  imitator  is  himself  widely  read,  as  was  the  case 
with  Montemayor,  he  is  but  carrying  on  the  work  of 
the  first  master.  Short  stories,  again,  were  popular 
enough  in  Spain ;  but  to  a  large  extent  they,  too,  were 
imitations.  The  Patranuelo — 'The  Story- Teller  '  — 
of  Juan  de  Timoneda,  or  the  Cigarrales  de  Toledo 
of  Tirso  de  Molina,  are  full  of  the  matter  of  the 
Fabliaux  and  the  Italian  JVovelli.1  What  the  Spaniard 
did  which  was  also  a  contribution  to  the  literature 
of  Europe  was  done  neither  in  the  pastoral  nor  in 
the  short  story,  but  in  the  long  tale  of  heroic  or  of 
vulgar  adventure.  His  are  the  Libros  de  Caballerias 
— '  Books  of  Knightly  Deeds '  —  which  are  the  pa- 
rents of  the  true  modern  romance;  and  the  Novelas 
de  Picaros,  or,  '  Tales  of  Eogues/  the  counterpart,  and 
even  perhaps  a  little  the  burlesque  of  the  first,  are  the 
ancestors  of  all  the  line  which  comes  through  Gil  Bias. 
Then  his  was  Don  Quixote,  which  belongs  to  no  class, 
but  is  at  once  universal  and  a  thing  standing  by  itself, 
a  burlesque  of  the  Libros  de  Caballerias  which  grew 
into  a  sadly  humorous  picture  of  human  delusion,  and 
was  also  an  expression  of  the  genius  of  Miguel  de 
Cervantes. 

The  books  of  Chivalry,  or  of  Knightly  Deeds,  which 
is  perhaps  the  more  accurate  translation  of  the  Spanish 
plural  Caballerias,  like  the  Eomances,  cannot  be  said 

1  The  Patrafiuelo  is  reprinted  by  Ochoa  in  his  Tesoro  de  Novelistas 
Espanoles,  Paris,  1847,  vol.  i.  He  also  gives  one  story  from  Tirso  de 
Molina — The  Three  Deceived  Husbands.  It  is  &  fabliau.  A  Cigarral 
was  the  name  given  to  a  country  villa  near  Toledo. 


126      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

to  belong  to  the  literature  of  the  Kenaissance.  They 
were  a  survival  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  direct  suc- 
cessors of  the  Romans  d'Aventures,  which  had  sprung 
from  the  Chansons  de  Gestes. 

The  Arthurian  stories  of  Lancelot  and  of  Merlin 
were  known  to  the  Spaniards,  and  had  an  enduring 
popularity  by  the  side  of  their  own  Tales  of  Chivalry. 
There  is  even  one  book  belonging  in  essential  to  the 
school  which  certainly  preceded  the  Amadis.  This  is 
the  Valencian  Tirant  lo  Blanch,  written  in  Catalan,  of 
which  the  first  three  books  are  the  work  of  Juan  Mar- 
torell,  and  the  fourth  was  added  by  Mosen  Juan  de 
Galba,  at  the  request  of  a  lady,  Isabel  de  Loriz.  It 
was  printed  in  Valencia  in  1490,  was  translated  into 
Spanish,  though  with  suppressions,  and  had  the  rather 
curious  fortune  to  be  published  in  a  French  version  in 
1737  by  a  gentleman  whose  own  name  was  not  un- 
worthy of  a  Libro  de  Caballerias,  A.  C.  P.  Tubieres  de 
Grimoard  de  Pestels  de  Levi,  Count  of  Caylus. 

Here  it  is,  perhaps,  but  fair  to  wrarn  the  reader  of 
the  extreme  difficulty  of  making  more  than  a  slight 
acquaintance  with  these  once  widely  read  tales.  Popu- 
larity and  neglect  have  alike  been  fatal  to  them.  They 
were  thumbed  to  pieces  while  they  were  liked,  and 
thrown  aside  as  worthless  when  the  fashion  had  changed. 
Single  copies  alone  remain  of  some,  as,  for  instance, 
the  curious  '  Don  Florindo,  he  of  the  Strange  Adven- 
ture,' of  which  Don  Pascual  de  Gayangos  gives  a  long 
analysis.  Even  Don  Pascual  had  never  seen  the 
Spanish  original  of  the  once  renowned  Palmcrin  of 
England.      Southey  was  compelled  to  make  up  his 


SPANISH    PROSE   ROMANCE.  127 

Palmerin  by  correcting  Anthony  Munday's  translation 
from  a  French  version.  Surviving  copies  are  scattered 
in  the  public  libraries,  and  it  is  probable  that  nobody 
has  seen  them  all.  So  we  must  speak  with  a  certain 
reserve  concerning  them,  but  yet  with  a  tolerably 
well-founded  conviction  that  what  one  has  not  seen 
does  not  differ  in  material  respects  from  what  has 
come  in  one's  way. 

It  is  not  the  matter  of  these  tales,  but  the  spirit, 
which  attaches  them  to  the  Middle  Ages.  Knights 
and  damsels  errant,  dwarfs,  dragons,  giants,  and  en- 
chanters were  not  neglected  by  the  poets  of  the  Italian 
Kenaissance,  but  they  were  dealt  with  in  gaiety,  and 
The  Libros  de  more  than  half  in  mockery.  But  the  Libros 
Cabaiiems.  ^e  Caballerias  are  very  serious.  Chivalry 
was  not  to  their  authors  an  old  dream,  but  a  still 
living  standard  of  conduct,  and  they  carried  on  the 
tradition  of  the  Middle  Ages  with  absolute  sincerity. 

When  the  Libros  de  Caballerias  are  described  as  the 
direct  descendants  of  the  Romans  d 'Aventures,  it 
must  be  understood  that  this  does  not  imply  that 
the  actual  story  had  its  origin  out  of  Spain.  We 
cannot  say  stories,  because  there  is  in  reality  only 
one,  which  was  constantly  rewritten,  with  changes 
which  in  the  majority  of  cases  hardly  go  beyond  the 
names.  There  is  one  parent  story  closely  imitated  by 
The  A.madis  of  tne  others,  and  that  is  the  Amadis  of 
Gaul-  Gaul}     The  honour  of  the  first  invention 

has   been    claimed    by   the   French,    on    the    general 

1  Libros  de  Caballerias  in  the  Biblioteca  de  Ribadeneyra,  with  an 
exhaustive  introduction  by  Don  Pascual  de  Gayangos,  vol.  xl. 


128      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

ground  that  their  influence  in  Spain  and  Portugal 
was  great,  and  that  therefore  they  must  not  only 
have  carried  the  taste  for  tales  of  chivalrous  adven- 
ture beyond  the  Pyrenees,  but  have  created  all  the 
stories  and  personages.  But  the  French  Amadis  has 
been  lost,  and  though  that  may  be  his  only  defect, 
it  suffices  to  leave  us  entitled  to  doubt  whether  he 
ever  existed,  except  in  the  patriotic  French  literary 
imagination.  What  is  certain  is  that  Amadis  was  a 
popular  hero  of  romance  with  the  Castilians  and 
Portuguese  before  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century. 
It  also  appears  to  be  put  beyond  doubt  that  a  version 
of  the  story  was  written  by  Vasco  de  Lobeira,  a  Por- 
tuguese gentleman  who  died  in  1403.  Whether  it 
was  the  first,  or  was  a  version  of  a  Castilian  original, 
or  whether  the  Trench,  who  were  then  very  numerous 
both  in  Castile  and  Portugal,  and  had  an  undeniable 
influence  on  the  poetry  of  both  countries,  and  more 
especially  of  the  second,  did  not  at  least  inspire  Vasco 
de  Lobeira,  are  questions  which  can  be  debated  for 
ever  by  national  vanity,  without  settlement.  The 
Amadis  of  Gaul,  which  belongs  to  literature,  and 
not  to  the  inane  region  of  suppositions,  disputes,  and 
lost  manuscripts,  is  the  work  of  Garcia  Ordonez  de 
Montalvo,  of  Medina  del  Campo  in  Leon.  It  was 
announced  as  an  adaptation  from  the  Portuguese. 
As  the  manuscript  of  Vasco  de  Lobeira  was  lost  in 
the  destruction  of  the  Duke  of  Arveiro's  library  in  the 
great  Lisbon  earthquake  of  1755,  we  cannot  tell  how 
far  Montalvo  followed,  or  improved  upon,  or  did  not 
improve  upon,  his  original.     Indeed,  in  the  absence  of 


SPANISH   PROSE   ROMANCE.  129 

a  Portuguese  manuscript,  it  is  impossible  to  be  sure 
that  the  Spanish  author  did  not  adopt  the  common 
device  of  presenting  his  work  as  a  translation,  when 
in  fact  it  was  wholly  his  own.  It  is  certainly  strange, 
considering  the  immense  popularity  of  the  Amadis  of 
Gaul  all  over  Europe,  that  the  Portuguese  did  not 
vindicate  their  right  to  him  by  publishing  Vasco  de 
Lobeira,  since  the  manuscript  was  known  to  exist,  and 
to  be  accessible,  in  the  library  of  a  great  noble. 

Be  all  that  as  it  may,  we  are  on  firm  ground  when 
we  come  to  the  proved  facts  concerning  the  actual 
writing  of  the  Spanish  Amadis.  It  belongs  to  the 
years  between  1492  and  1504.  The  first  known  edi- 
tion, that  of  Rome,  is  dated  1519 ;  but  it  is  unlikely, 
though  not  impossible,  that  there  had  not  been  a  Spanish 
predecessor.  There  is  a  known  edition  of  the  first  of 
the  rival  Palmerin  series,  which  is  dated  1511.  "What 
is  beyond  doubt  is  that  its  popularity  was  immediate 
and  widespread.  Spain  produced  twelve  editions  in 
fifty  years.  It  was  translated  in  French  and  Italian 
with  immense  acceptance.  One  of  the  best  known 
stories  of  lost  labour  and  disappointment  in  litera- 
ture is  that  Bernardo  Tasso,  the  father  of  Torquato, 
founded  a  considerable  reputation  on  the  fact  that 
he  had  undertaken  to  make  the  Amadis  the  founda- 
tion of  an  epic,  which  reputation  endured  until  the 
appearance  of  the  poem. 

As  if  in  direct  imitation  of  the  mediaeval  custom, 
Amadis  was  made  the  founder  of  a  family.  Montalvo 
gave  the  world  the  deeds  of  his  son  Esplandian  in 
1526,  and  from  another  hand  came  in  the  same  year 

I 


130      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER.  RENAISSANCE. 

his  nephew,  Florisando,  and  then  a  long  line,  reaching 
to  the  twelfth  book.  The  succession  in  France  was 
even  longer,  for  it  reached  the  twenty -fourth.  Beside 
the  house  of  Ainadis,  there  arose  and  nourished  the  dis- 
tinguished family  known  as  the  Palmerines.  The  first 
two  of  this  series,  the  Primaleon  and  the  Palmerin  de 
Oliva,  are  said  to  have  been  the  work  of  a  lady  of 
"  Augustobriga,  a  town  in  Portugal."  But  her  name 
and  very  existence  are  uncertain,  while  neither  of  the 
places  called  Augustobriga  in  the  time  of  the  Eoman 
dominion  in  the  Peninsula  is  in  Portugal.  The  most 
famous  of  this  line,  the  Palmerin  of  England,  was  for 
long  attributed  to  a  Portuguese,  Francisco  de  Moraes, 
who  after  a  rather  distinguished  public  career  was  mur- 
dered at  Evora  in  1572  ;  but  it  was  probably  the  work 
of  a  Spaniard,  Luis  Hurtado  of  Toledo.  It  was  the  con- 
fusing habit  of  the  authors  of  these  tales  to  call  them 
the  fifth,  or  sixth,  or  other,  "  book  "  of  Amadis,  or  of 
Primaleon.  Sometimes  rival  fifths  or  sixths  appeared, 
and  translators  did  not  follow  the  Spanish  numeration. 
Hence  much  trouble  to  the  faithful  historian.  Yet 
the  family  history  can  be  followed  with  tolerable 
accuracy.  Don  Pascual  de  Gayangos  has  been  at  the 
pains  to  make  a  regular  pedigree  for  both,  showing  the 
main  lines  and  collateral  branches.  It  is  a  satisfac- 
tion to  be  able  to  state  with  confidence  that  the  lady 
Flerida,  daughter  of  Palmerin  de  Oliva,  married  Don 
Duardos  (Edward),  son  of  Frederick,  King  of  England, 
and  of  a  sister  of  Meleadus,  King  of  Scotland,  and  that 
Palmerin  of  England  was  their  son.  He  again  married 
Polinarda,  and   was   the   father  of  Don    Duardos  de 


SPANISH   PROSE   ROMANCE.  131 

Bretaila  II.,  who  was  the  father  of  Don  Clarisel.  The 
Palmerin  series,  by  the  way,  is  much  less  rich  than 
the  Amadis  in  those  superb  names  which  are  not  the 
least  of  the  pleasures  of  the  Tales  of  Chivalry.  It 
rarely  rises  to  the  height  of  Cadragante,  or  Manete  the 
Measured,  or  Angriote  de  Estravaus,  and  never  to  the 
level  of  the  Queen  Pintiquinestra,  or  the  Giant  Famon- 
gomadan,  whom  Cervantes  had  in  his  mind  when  he 
imagined  Brandabarbaran  de  Boliche.  The  stories  in- 
dependent of  these  two  series  are  numerous,  though  less 
numerous  than  the  reader  who  has  not  looked  into  the 
matter  may  suppose.  Their  names — and  that  is  all 
which  survives  of  some — will  be  found  in  their  proper 
places  in  the  lists  of  Don  Pascual  de  Gayangos. 

It  will  be  seen  that  much  of  this  work  is  either 
anonymous,  or  is  attributed  on  vague  evidence  to 
authors  of  whom  the  name  only  is  known.  The  chief 
exception  is  the  Feliciano  de  Silva  at  whose  style 
Cervantes  laughed.  It  happens  that  something  is 
known  of  Feliciano,  and  that  it  is  to  his  honour. 
He  was  page  to  the  sixth  Duke  of  Medina  Sidonia, 
and  he  saved  the  Duchess  from  being  drowned  in 
the  Guadalquivir  at  the  risk  of  his  own  life;  which, 
it  will  be  allowed,  was  an  action  not  unworthy  of 
the  author  of  Libros  de  Caballerias.  He  wrote  the 
Lisuarte  de  Grecia,  the  Amadis  de  Grecia,  and  several 
others,  including  the  Florisel  de  Niquea.  Feliciano 
was  an  industrious  man  of  letters,  who  would  have 
been  a  useful  collaborator  with,  and  fairly  successful 
imitator  of,  Dumas,  had  time  and  chance  suited. 
He  adulterated  his  tales  of  knightly  deeds  by  im- 


132      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

itations  of  the  pastoral  model,  and  his  style  certainly 
laid  him  open  to  the  ridicule  of  Cervantes.  Yet  it 
is  not  more  pompous  and  mechanical  than  our  own 
Lyly,  and  is  better  than  the  manner  of  some  of  the 
Novelas  de  Picaros. 

v    None  of  the  commonplaces  in  the  history  of  litera- 
ture are  better  established  than  these :  that  the  Libros 
de  Cciballerias  were  tiresome  and  absurd : 

Influence  and 

character  of      that  they  appeared  in  immense  numbers, 

these  Tales.  ^  flooded  Qut  aU  betfcer   and    mQre  wnole_ 

some  reading ;  and  that  they  were  killed  by  Don 
Quixote.  Yet  there  are  probably  not  three  worse 
founded  commonplaces.  That  these  books  can  be 
tedious,  and  that  the  worst  of  them  can  be  very 
tedious,  is  true.  But  none  are  more  long-winded  than 
the  Golden  Epistles,  which  had  an  equally  great  popu- 
larity, or  than  some  well  -  accepted  reading  of  any 
generation  is  apt  to  look  to  later  times,  when  fashion 
has  changed.  They  were  certainly  neither  more 
tiresome  nor  more  essentially  absurd  than  the  Novela 
de  Picaros.  Their  number  was  not  very  great.  The 
whole  body  is  not  nearly  as  numerous  as  the  yearly 
output  of  novels  to-day  in  England ;  and  even  when 
their  inordinate  length  is  allowed  for,  their  total  bulk 
is  not  greater,  though  they  were  written  during  a  cen- 
tury. As  for  their  supposed  predominance,  it  must 
be  remembered  that  the  great  time  of  the  Libros  de 
Caballcrias  was  also  the  time  of  the  "  learned  poetry  " 
of  Spain,  of  the  growth  of  the  drama,  of  most  of  the 
romances,  and  of  some  of  the  best  work  of  the  his- 
torians and  the  mystic  writers.      That  Don   Quixote 


SPANISH   PROSE   ROMANCE.  133 

destroyed  them  may  seem  to  be  a  truth  too  firmly 
established  to  be  shaken,  and  yet  the  contrary  pro- 
position, that  it  was  the  waning  popularity  of  the 
Tales  of  Knightly  Deeds  which  made  Don  Quixote  pos- 
sible, is  on  the  whole  more  consistent  with  fact.  They 
had  been  less  and  less  written  for  a  generation  before 
Cervantes  produced  his  famous  First  Part.  The  Novelet 
de  Picaros  was  taking  their  place.  Eeaders  were  pre- 
disposed to  find  them  laughable,  and  therefore  enjoyed 
the  burlesque.  Cervantes'  own  half-humorous  boast 
has  been  taken  too  seriously.  The  ridicule  of  the 
Libros  de  Caballerias  is  the  least  valuable  part  of  Don 
Quixote,  and  is  not  in  itself  better  than  much  satire 
which  has  yet  failed  to  destroy  things  more  deserving 
of  destruction  than  the  family  of  Amaclis. 

Neither  the  popularity  nor  the  decline  of  the  Libros 
de  Caballerias  was  in  the  least  unintelligible.  These 
books  supplied  the  Spaniards  with  stories  of  fight- 
ing and  adventure  in  a  fighting  adventurous  time, 
when  the  taste  for  reading,  or  at  least  hearing  others 
read,  was  spreading,  and  when  the  theatre — the  only 
possible  rival — was  still  in  its  feeble  beginnings.  And 
what  they  gave  was  not  only  suited  to  the  time  but 
not  inferior  to  what  came  after.  The  English  reader 
who  wishes  to  put  it  to  the  test  has  an  easy  way  open 
to  him.  Let  him  take  the  adaptations  which  Southey 
made  of  Amaclis  of  Gaul,  or  Palmerin  of  England,  and 
compare  them,  not  with  Sir  Walter  Scott,  who  showed 
what  a  great  genius  could  do  with  a  motive  not  unlike 
that  of  the  Libros  de  Caballerias ;  not  with  Gil  Bias, 
which  shows  what  genius  could  do  with  the  machinery 


134      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

of  the  Novelet  ele  Picaros  ;  not  with  Don  Quixote,  which 
is  for  all  time, — but  with  an  English  version  of  the 
Guzman  ele  Alfarache,  the  book  which  first  firmly 
established  the  gusto  picaresco  at  the  very  close  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  He  will  find  much  repetition 
(though  Southey,  who  made  one  or  two  notable  addi- 
tions, has  suppressed  largely)  in  both,  but  in  the  Guz- 
man it  is  endless  sordid  roguery,  in  which  there  is  no 
general  human  truth,  and  in  place  of  it  a  mechanical 
exaggeration  of  a  temporary  form  of  Spanish  vaga- 
bondage, while  in  the  Amadis  or  Palmerin  it  is  some- 
thing not  unlike  the  noble  fancies  of  the  Arthurian 
legend. 

The  decline  of  the  Libros  ele  Caballerias  is  easily 
accounted  for.  They  ended  by  wearying  the  world 
with  monotony,  and  the  increasing  extravagance  of 
incident  and  language,  which  was  their  one  resource 
for  avoiding  monotony.  The  Spaniard's  tendency  to 
repeat  stock  types  in  the  same  kind  of  action  was 
visible  here  as  elsewhere.  The  Amadis  gave  the 
pattern,  and  it  was  followed.  A  hero  who  is  the  son 
The  real  cause,  of  a  king,  and  is  also  a  model  of  knightly 
of  their  decline.  pr0wess  and  virtues,  with  a  brother  in 
arms  who,  while  no  less  valiant,  is  decidedly  less 
virtuous,  are  the  chief  figures.  Amadis,  the  Bel- 
tenebros — the  lovely  dark  man — is  the  pink  of  loyalty 
to  his  peerless  Oriana,  who  is  the  fairest  and  most 
loving  of  women.  Galaor  is  gay  and  volatile,  light  of 
love,  but  loyal  in  friendship.  Amadis  is  born  out  of 
wedlock,  and  left  to  fortune  by  his  mother,  or  for 
some  other  reason  brought    up    far   away   from    the 


SPANISH   PROSE   ROMANCE.  135 

throne  which  is  lawfully  his,  and  fights  his  way  to  his 
crown  without  ever  failing  for  an  instant  in  his  devo- 
tion to  Oriana.  Galaor  helps  him,  and  loves  what 
ladies  he  meets  on  the  road.  Amadis  breathes  out 
his  mistress's  name  as  he  lays  his  lance  in  rest, 
Galaor  throws  a  defiant  jest  in  front  of  him ;  Amadis 
has  the  gift  of  tears,  but  Galaor  laughs  in  the  jaws 
of  death,  laughs  in  fact  at  everything  except  the 
honour  of  a  gentleman — and  on  that  he  smiles.  It 
is  a  brotherhood  between  Sir  Charles  Grandison  and 
Mercutio.  Combats,  giants,  fairy  ladies,  enchanters 
good  and  bad,  make  up  the  matter  of  the  story.  If 
it  is  essentially  unwholesome,  so  is  the  Eound  Table 
legend ;  and  if  it  is  necessarily  absurd,  so  is  the  Faerie 
Queen.  But  when  it  had  been  done  once  in  Amadis, 
and  for  a  second  time  in  Palmerin,  it  was  done  for 
good.  To  take  the  machinery  of  the  Libros  de  Cabal- 
lerias,  and  put  a  new  spirit  into  it,  which,  as  Cervantes 
saw,  was  possible,  was  not  given  to  any  Spaniard. 
All  they  could  do  was  to  repeat,  and  then  endeavour 
to  hide  the  repetition  by  multiplying  everything  on  a 
fixed  scale.  The  giants  grew  bigger,  the  sword-cuts 
more  terrific,  the  combats  more  numerous,  the  mon- 
sters more  hideous,  the  exalted  sentiments  swelled 
till  they  were  less  credible  than  the  giants.  The  fine 
Castilian  of  Garcia  Ordonez  was  tortured  into  the 
absurdities  which  bad  writers  think  to  be  style. 
The  Libros  de  Caballerias,  which  had  been  a  nat- 
ural survival,  and  revival,  of  the  Middle  Ages  in 
the  early  sixteenth  century,  were  unnatural  at  its 
close.     Don  Quixote  did  but  hasten  their  end.     They 


136      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

would  have  perished  in  any  case  before  the  Novelas  de 
Picaros,  which  in  turn  ran  much  the  same  course,  and 
were  extinguished  without  the  intervention  of  satire. 
That  the  taste  of  the  time  was  tending  away  from 
the  higher  forms  of  romance  is  shown  by  the  little 
following  found  for  the  Civil  Wars  of  Granada  by 
(Hues  Perez  de  Hita,  of  whom  little  or  nothing  is 
known.1  This  book,  of  which  the  first  part  was  pub- 
lished in  1598  and  the  second  in  1604,  is  the  original 
source  of  all  the  stories  of  the  Zegries  and  Abencer- 
rages.  It  gave  the  Spaniards  a  model  for  the  histori- 
cal novel  proper,  but  though  it  was  popular  at  the 
time — so  popular  that  it  was  taken  for  real  history — 
"Perez  de  Hita  founded  no  school.  The  Spanish  char- 
acter was  becoming  too  impoverished  for  a  large  and 
poetic  romance.  What  imagination  there  was,  was 
becoming  concentrated  in  the  theatre  before  wither- 
ing entirely. 

The  fate  of  the  Novelas  de  Picaros  is  one  of  the  most 
curious  in  literature.  But  for  them,  and  their  popu- 
larity outside  of  Spain,  there  could  not  well  have  been 
any  Gil  Bias,  and  without  him  the  history  of 
modern  prose  fiction  must  have  been  very  different. 
Yet  apart  from  the  example  they  set,  and  the 
machinery  they  supplied,  their  worth  is  small.  We 
find  in  them  the  same  monotony  of  type  and  incident 
as  in  the  comedia  and  the  Libros  de  Caballerias,  while 
they  have  neither  the  fine  theatrical  qualities  of  the 
first  (which  was,  we  may  allow,  inevitable)  nor   the 

1  The  QuervtU  Chiles  de  Granada  is  in  vol.  iii.  of  the  Biblioteoa  di 
Ribadencyra. 


SPANISH   PROSE   ROMANCE.  137 

manly  spirit  of  the  second.     Poetry,  heroic  sentiment, 
or    deep    religious    feeling   we   could    not 

Character  of  the  r  &  o 

Noveiasde  expect  from  what  only  professed  to  deal 
with  the  common  and  animal  side  of  life. 
But  they  do  not  give  what  might  have  compensated 
for  these  things,  average  sensual  human  nature,  act- 
ing credibly  and  drawn  with  humour.  Their  fun — and 
they  strained  at  jocularity — is  of  the  kind  which  de- 
lights to  pull  the  chair  from  below  you  when  you  are 
about  to  sit  down,  and  laughs  consumedly  at  your 
bruises.  To  make  the  jest  complete  you  must  be  old, 
ugly,  sickly,  and  very  poor.  There  is  no  laugh  in  the 
Novelets  cle  Picaros,  only  at  their  best  a  loud  hard 
guffaw,  and  when  they  do  not  rise  to  that,  a  perpetual 
forced  giggle.  Truth  to  life  is  as  far  from  them  as 
from  the  Lihros  cle  Caballerias,  but  the  two  are  on 
opposite  sides.  In  mere  tediousness  they  equal  the 
heroic  absurdity,  for — and  this  is  not  their  least  offen- 
sive feature — they  are  obtrusively  didactic.  The 
larger  half  of  the  Guzman  cle  Alfarache  is  composed  of 
preachment  of  an  incredibly  platitudinous  order. 
Boredom  for  boredom,  the  endless  combats  of  the 
knight-errant  are  better.  And  withal  we  find  the 
same  childish  effort  to  attain  originality  by  mere 
exaggeration.  The  Lazarillo  cle  Tonne's  forces  the  tone 
of  the  Gelestina,  Guzman  cle  Alfarache  advances,  more 
particularly  in  bulk,  beyond  Lazarillo,  Marcos  de 
Obregon  improves  on  Guzman,  and  so  it  goes  on  to  the 
grinning  and  sardonic  brutality  of  Quevedo's  Pablo 
de  Segovia  and  the  jerking  capers  of  Don  Gregorio 
Ghiadana.     This  last  is  the  work  of  an  exiled  Span- 


138      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

ish  Jew,  Enriquez  Gomez  (/.  1638-1660).  Imagine 
Villon's  Ballade  des  Pcndus  without  the  verse,  with- 
out the  pathos,  spun  out  in  prose,  growing  ever 
more  affected  through  endless  repetitions  of  sordid 
incident,  and  you  have  the  Novela  de  Picaros.1 

Yet  they  started  from  what  might  well  have  been 
the  beginning  of  better.  The  Celestina  had  a  certain 
truth  to  life  in  its  really  valuable  parts,  and  it  did  not 
strive  to  amuse  with  mere  callous  practical  joking.2 
This  curious  dialogue  story  was  written  perhaps  before, 
or  it  may  be  about,  the  time  of  the  conquest  of  Gran- 
ada— 1492 — and  both  the  identity  of  its  author  and 
its  date  of  publication  are  obscure.  It  is  divided  into 
twenty-one  so-called  acts,  of  which  the  first  is  very 
long  and  the  others  are  very  short.  Fernando  Kojas 
of  Montalvan,  by  whom  it  was  published,  says  that 
the  first  act  was  the  work  of  Eodrigo  Cota  of  Toledo, 
a  Jew,  the  known  author  of  some  tolerable  verses  in 
the  style  of  the  Court  school ;  and  that  he  himself 
finished  it  at  the  request  of  friends.  This  account  has 
been  disputed  by  the  criticism  which  delights  in  dis- 
puting the  attribution  of  everything  to  everybody.  It 
is  neither  supported  by  internal,  nor  contradicted  by 
\  external,  evidence.    The  literary  importance 

V-  The  Celestina.  '  J  r 

of  the  tale  is  not  affected  by  it  in  the  least. 
There  are  two  elements  in  the  Celestina.     It  contains 


1  See  Novelistas  anteriores  a  Cervantes  and  Novelistas  postcriorcs  a 
Cervantes  in  the  Biblioteca  de  Ribadeneyra,  vols.  iii.  and  xviii. 

2  For  the  history  of  the  Celestina  see  Mr  Fitz  Maurice  Kelly's  in- 
troduction to  the  reprint  of  Mabbe's  excellent  version  in  Mr  Henley's, 
Tudor  Translations. 


SPANISH   PKOSE   ROMANCE.  139 

a  love-story  of  the  headlong  southern  order,  sudden 
and  violent  in  action,  inflated,  and  frequently  insuffer- 
ably pedantic  in  expression,  withal  somewhat  common- 
place. With  this,  and  subservient  to  this,  there  is  a 
background,  a  subordinate,  busy,  scheming  world  of 
procuresses,  prostitutes,  dishonest  servants,  male  and 
female,  and  bullies,  which  is  amazingly  vivid.  Celes- 
tina,  whose  name  has  replaced  the  pompous  original 
title  of  the  story,  Tragicomedy  of  Calisto  and  Melibma, 
is  the  ancestress  of  the  two  characters  of  similar  trade 
in  Pamela  and  Clarissa.  She  had  many  forerunners  in 
mediaeval  literature,  in  and  out  of  Spain.  But  she  has 
never  been  surpassed  in  vividness  of  portraiture,  while 
her  household  of  loose  women  and  bullies,  with  their 
intrigues  and  jealousies,  their  hangers-on,  and  their 
arts  of  temptation,  is  drawn  with  no  less  truth  than 
gusto.  The  quality  of  their  talk  is  admirable,  and  the 
personages  are  not  described  from  the  outside,  or  pre- 
sented to  us  as  puppet  types,  but  allowed  to  manifest 
themselves,  and  to  grow,  with  a  convincing  reality  rare 
indeed  in  Spanish  literature. 

Though  the  popularity  of  the  Celestina,  not  only  in 
Spain  but  abroad,  was  great,  it  did  not  produce  any 
marked  effect  on  Spanish  literature  until  a  generation 
had  passed.  It  was  adapted  on  the  stage,  but  there  it 
left  few  traces  except  on  the  racy  dialogue  of  the  prose 
entremeses.  The  poetic  form  of  the  Spanish  comedy 
did  not,  and  even  perhaps  could  not,  adapt  itself  to  the 
alert  naturalistic  tone  of  the  Celestina,  and  the  subjects 
of  the  plays  grew  ever  more  romantic  and  more  re- 
mote from  the  vulgar  world.     But  this  answered  too 


140      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

well  to  a  natural  taste  of  the  Spaniards  to  remain 
The  Lazariiio  without  a  following.  Its  first  real  successor 
de  Tonnes,  (apart  from  rifacimentos  or  mere  echoes,  of 
which  there  were  several)  was  the  Vicla  de  Lazariiio 
de  Tonne's;  sus  Fortunas  y  Adversidades,1  attrib- 
uted on  very  dubious  evidence  to  the  famous  Diego 
Hurtado  de  Mendoza,  and  with  not  much  greater 
probability  to  Fray  Juan  de  Ortega,  of  the  Order  of  St 
Jerome.  The  date  of  its  composition  is  uncertain. 
The  first  known  edition  is  of  1553,  but  it  may  have 
been  read  in  manuscript  before  that.  In  the  Lazariiio 
we  have  the  Novela  de  Picaros  already  complete,  differ- 
ing only  from  those  which  were  to  come  after  in  the 
greater  simplicity  of  its  style  and  in  freshness.  The 
hero  is  a  poor  boy  of  Tormes,  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Salamanca,  none  too  honest  by  nature,  and  made  per- 
fectly unscrupulous  by  a  life  of  dependence  on  harsh, 
or  poverty-stricken,  masters.  The  story  tells  how  he 
passes  from  one  service  to  another,  generally  after 
playing  some  more  or  less  ferocious  trick  on  his 
employer.  It  is  a  scheme  which  affords  a  good  open- 
ing for  satirical  sketches  of  life,  and  the  author,  who- 
ever he  was,  clearly  adopted  it  for  that  among  other 
reasons.  Lazarillo's  master,  the  poor  cavalier  who 
keeps  up  a  show  of  living  like  a  gentleman  while  in 
fact  he  is  starving  at  home — too  proud  either  to  work 
or  beg,  but  not  too  proud  to  cherish  schemes  of  en- 

1  The  early  history  of  the  book,  with  an  account  of  the  doubts 
which  prevail  as  to  its  authorship,  will  be  found  in  the  Vie  de  Lazar- 
iiio de  Tormis.  A  new  translation  by  M.  A.  Morel  Fatio.  Paris, 
1886. 


SPANISH    PROSE    ROMANCE.  141 

trapping  a  wife  with  a  dowry,  and  not  spirited  enough 
to  serve  as  a  soldier — was  no  doubt  a  familiar  figure 
in  Spain,  and  he  became  a  stock  puppet  of  the  Novelets 
de  gusto  Picaresco.  Another  scene  of  real,  though  not 
peculiarly  Spanish,  satire  deals  with  a  dishonest  seller 
of  pardons  and  his  sham  miracles.  The  Eeformation 
had  imposed  limits  on  the  freedom  of  orthodox  writers 
to  deal  with  the  sins,  or  even  absurdities,  of  churchmen, 
and  this  passage  was  suppressed,  as  of  bad  example, 
by  the  Inquisition.  The  majority  of  the  figures  are, 
however,  less  satirical  than  grotesque.  We  find  in  the 
Lazarillo,  though  not  to  the  extent  which  afterwards 
become  common,  the  love  of  dwelling  on  starvation, 
poverty,  and  physical  infirmities  as  if  they  were  things 
amusing  in  themselves.  But  this  is  less  the  case  than 
in  its  successors,  and  being  nearly  the  first,  or  even 
the  actual  first,  in  the  fully  developed  form,  it  has  a 
certain  freshness.  It  has  the  merit  of  being  short, 
and  leaves  its  hero  dishonourably  married,  with  a 
promise  of  a  continuation,  which  was  never  written 
by  the  author. 

Putting  aside  spurious  "  second  parts  "  of  the  Laza- 
rillo, the  next  event  in  the  advance — we  cannot  say  the 
development — of  the  Novela  de  Picaros  is  the  publica- 
tion of  the  Guzman  de  Alfarache  of  Mateo  Aleman, 
a  Sevillian  of  whose  birth,  life,  and  death  nothing 
certain  is  known.  This  book,  appearing  just  as  the 
Libros  de  Caballerias  were  dying  of  exhaustion,  set 
Guzman  de  the  example  to  a  swarm  of  followers.  Yet 
Alfarache.  ft  was  itself  but  an  imitation  of  Lazarillo, 
greatly  enlarged,  and  over-burdened  with  what  Le  Sage, 


142      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

who  translated  it,  most  justly  called  "  superfluous  moral 
reflections."  The  second  title  of  the  book,  La  Atalaya 
~de  la  VidcT— ' The  Beacon  of  Life' — indicates  Ne- 
man's didactic  intention,  which  even  without  it  is 
obtrusive.  But  a  beacon  of  life,  to  be  other  than 
a  useless  blaze,  must  be  set  to  warn  us  off  real 
dangers  in  real  life:  it  must  flame  with  satire  on 
possible  human  errors.  The  satire  of  Aleman  is  akin 
to  Marston's,  and  Marston's  many  followers  among 
ourselves, — it  is  a  loud  bullying  shout  at  mere  base- 
nesses made  incredible  by  being  abstracted  from 
average  human  nature,  and  kneaded  into  dummies. 
Celestina,  besides  being  an  impudent,  greedy  servant 
of  vice,  is  also  a  woman  with  humour  and  an  amusing 
tongue.  Her  household  are  the  scum  of  the  earth, 
but  they  are  human  scum,  with  a  capacity  for  enjoy- 
ing themselves  as  men  and  women  without  dragging 
their  humour  of  vice  in,  when  no  cause  sets  it  in 
motion.  They  can  laugh  and  cry,  like  and  dislike, 
as  other  human  beings  do.  But  the  personages  of 
Mateo  Aleman  are  grinning  puppets,  galvanised  to 
imitate  the  gestures  of  greed,  cowardice,  mendacity, 
and  cruelty,  abstracted  from  humanity.  Then,  they  are 
set  to  play  a  wild  fantasia  in  vacuo.  What  is  true  of 
Mateo  Aleman  applies  equally  to  his  followers. 

A  brief  outline  must  suffice  for  his  successors.  A 
spurious  second  part  of  Guzman  de  Alfarache  was 
Foiimvers  of      published   in    1603,   written,   as   it  would 

Mateo  Aleman.    geenij    ty    Qne     ]^artij    a     Valencian,    who 

assumed  the  noble  name  of  Luxan.  This,  by  the  way, 
is  one  proof  among  many  that  the  Libros  de  Caballerias 


SPANISH   PROSE   ROMANCE.  143 

were  not  the  prevailing  taste  of  readers  when  Cer- 
vantes published  his  first  part  of  Don  Quixote  in  1605, 
or  else  it  would  have  suggested  itself  to  nobody  to 
trade  on  the  popularity  of  Gfuzman.  In  1605  Aleman 
wrote  a  second  part,  in  which  he  victimises  the  plagi- 
arist in  a  fashion  afterwards  followed  by  Cervantes 
when  provoked  in  the  same  fashion.  In  the  same  -  ^ 
year  came  out  the  Picara  Justina  of  Andreas  Perez, 
a  Dominican  who  wrote  under  the  name  of  Francisco 
Lopez  de  Ubeda,  with  a  she  rogue  as  heroine,  with 
exactly  the  same  spirit  and  machinery,  and  an  iden- 
tical didactic  purpose,  but  written  in  a  tortured  style. 
Vicente  Espinel  (?  1551-?  1630),  who  was  otherwise 
notable  for  adding  the  fifth  string  to  the  guitar  and  as 
a  verse -writer,  published  El  Escudero  (i.e.,  Squire) 
Marcos  de  Obregon  in  1618.  This  squire  is  of  the 
class  of  the  Biscayan  whom  Don  Quixote  overthrew, 
an  elderly  man  who  waited  on  ladies  —  the  fore- 
runner of  the  footman  with  the  gold-headed  stick, 
familiar  to  ourselves  till  very  recent  times.  He 
has  led  the  usual  life.  The  Marcos  de  Obregon 
had  the  honour  of  contributing  a  few  incidents  to 
Le  Sage.  The  soul  of  Pedro  Garcia  is  not  taken 
from  the  introduction,  but  put  in  place  of  what 
Espinel  had  written.  In  the  Spanish  story  two 
students  find  a  tombstone  on  which  are  written  the 
words  "  Unio,  unio,"  a  pun  on  pearl  and  union.  One 
sees  nothing  in  the  riddle,  and  goes  on.  The  other 
digs  and  finds — the  skeletons  of  the  lovers  of  Ante- 
quera,  who  threw  themselves  together  from  a  preci- 
pice to  escape  capture  by  the  Moors.     Here  we  see 


144      EUROPEAN    LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

what  Le  Sage  did  with  the  framework  supplied  him 
by  the  Spaniards.  He  took  what  was  only  Span- 
ish, and  made  it  universal.  We  can  all  laugh  over 
the  bag  of  coin  which  was  the  soul  of  Pedro  Garcia, 
but  who  understands  the  story  of  the  Spanish  lovers 
without  a  commentary  ?  After  Marcos  de  Obregon  there 
follow  mainly  repetitions. 
y  An  exception  must,  however,  be  made  for  the  Gran 
Tacafio  —  'The  Great  Sharper,'  Paul  of  Segovia,  by 
Quevedo.1     Don  Francisco  Gomez  de  Que- 

Quevedo. 

vedo  y  Villegas,  Sefior  de  la  Torre  de  Juan 
Abad  (1580-1645),  was  a  very  typical  Spaniard  of 
those  who  came  from  "the  mountain,"  and  lived  an 
agitated  life  in  the  Spain  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
He  served  under  the  once  famous  Duke  of  Osuna, 
viceroy  of  Sicily  and  Naples,  was  implicated  in  the 
mysterious  conspiracy  against  Venice,  and  finally  suf- 
fered from  the  hostility  of  the  Count  Duke  of  Olivares. 
In  literature  he  is  still  the  shadow  of  a  great  name  as 
poet,  scholar,  and  satirist.  Among  his  countrymen 
his  memory  is  still  popular  as  the  hero  of  innumer- 
able stories  of  much  the  same  kind  as  those  told  in 
Scotland  of  Buchanan,  and  in  France  of  Rabelais. 
For  his  sake  Pablo  de  Segovia  may  be  mentioned, 
and  also  because  it  is  the  Novela  de  Picaros  as  the 
Spaniards  wrote  it,  stripped  of  the  last  rag  of  what- 

1  Quevedo's  works  are  in  the  Bibliotcca  de  Ribadeneyra  ;  but  the 
desirable  edition  is  that  of  Sancha,  Madrid,  1791,  in  eleven  pretty 
volumes.  A  translation  of  '  The  Sharper  '  was  published  in  London 
in  1892,  admirably  illustrated  by  the  Spanish  draughtsman  known  m 
Daniel  Vierge. 


SPANISH   PROSE   ROMANCE.  145 

ever  could  disguise  its  essential  hard  brutality.  If 
you  can  gloat  over  starvation — if  the  hangman  ex- 
patiating joyfully  over  halters  and  lashes  seems  a 
pleasant  spectacle  to  you  —  if  blows,  falls,  disease, 
hunger,  dirt,  and  every  form  of  suffering,  told  with 
a  loud  callous  laugh,  and  utterly  unrelieved,  seem  to 
you  worth  reading  about, — then  Pablo  de  Segovia  is 
much  at  your  service.  But  Quevedo  did  other  than 
this.  Some  of  his  satiric  verse  has  life^  and  if  not 
gaiety, "sHll  a  species  of  bitter  jocularity;  and  more- 
over, he  gave  a  new  employment  to  the  gusto  picaresco 
in  his  VisioTis.  These  once  world-renowned  satires 
are  composed  of  such  matter  as  the  vices  of  lawyers, 
doctors,  police-officers,  unfaithful  wives,  complacent 
^TiusFahds,  &c.  To  those  who  wish  to  master  the 
Castilian  language  in  all  its  resources  they  are  in- 
valuable, and  it  is  in  itself  so  fine  that  we  can  endure 
much  to  gain  access  to  its  treasures.  But  it  is  pos- 
sible to  gain  a  quite  accurate  understanding  of  Que- 
vedo by  reading  the  translation  and  amplification  of 
his  Visions  by  our  own  Sir  Eoger  L'Estrange.  Then, 
just  in  order  to  see  where  this  spirit  and  this  method 
lead,  it  is  not  a  waste  of  time  to  go  on  to  Ned  Ward. 
There  was  something  very  congenial  to  the  Restora- 
tion in  the  Spanish  gusto  picaresco,  and  that  is  its 
sufficient  condemnation.  Yet  it  did  supply  Le  Sage 
with  what  he  might  not  have  been  able  to  elaborate 
for  himself,  and  thereby  it  contributed  to  the  gaiety 

and  the  wisdom  of  nations.     ^- 

That  the  name  of(Miguel  de  Cervantes,  (towers  above 
all  others  in   Spanish   literature   is   a  commonplace. 

K 


146      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

/Montesquieu's  jest,  that  Spain  has  produced  hut 
one  good  book,  which  was  written  to 
prove  the  absurdity  of  all  the  others,  is 
only  the  flippant  statement  of  the  truth  that  the  one 
Spanish  book  which  the  world  has  taken  to  itself  is 
Don  Quixote.  What  else  the  Spaniards  have  done  in 
literature  may  have  its  own  beauty  and  interest.  It 
may  even  have  affected  the  literature  of  other  nations. 
The  Spanish  drama  did  something  to  form  the  purely 
theatrical  skill  of  the  playwright,  and  the  Novela  de 
Picaros  gave  a  framework  for  the  prose  story  of  com- 
mon life.  Yet  the  plays  of  Lope  or  of  Calderon,  the 
tales  of  Aleman,  Espinel,  and  others,  are  essentially 
Spanish,  and  Spanish  of  one  time.  It  is  only  in 
touches  here  and  there  that  we  find  in  them,  behind 
their  native  vesture,  any  touch  of  what  is  human  and 
universal.  Even  when  they  dealt  with  what  was 
common  to  them  with  other  peoples,  the  emotions  of 
piety  and  devotion,  they  gave  them  their  own  colour, 
their  own  purely  Spanish  flavour.  There  is  no  Imita- 
tion of  Christ,  no  Pilgrim's  Progress,  in  their  religious 
writing.  But  Don  Quixote  is  so  little  purely  Spanish 
that  its  influence  has  been  mainly  felt  abroad,  that  it 
has  been,  and  is,  loved  by  many  who  have  neither 
heard  nor  wish  to  hear  of  the  literature  lying 
round  it. 

The  life  of  Cervantes  has  been  made  so  familiar  that 
the  details  need  only  be  briefly  mentioned  here.1     It 

1  The  main  authority  for  the  life  of  Cervantes  is  still  the  Biograiphy 
by  Dun  Martin  Fernandez  de  Navarrete,  published  by  the  Spanish 
Academy  in   1819.      The  memory  of  Cervantes   has  undergone  the 


SPANISH    THOSE   ROMANCE.  147 

is  within  the  knowledge  of  all  who  take  any  interest 
in  him  at  all  that  he  was  by  descent  a 
gentleman  of  an  ancient  house.  His  own 
branch  of  it  had  become  poor.  He  was  born,  prob- 
ably on  some  day  in  October  1547,  at  Alcala  de 
Henares,  a  town  lying  to  the  east  of  Madrid,  and  the 
seat  of  the  university  founded  by  Cardinal  Jimenez. 
It  does  not  appear  that  Cervantes  ever  attended  the 
university,  or  received  more  than  the  trifling  schooling 
which  fell  to  the  lot  of  Shakespeare  also.  Mar,  Iglesia, 
y  casct  de  rey — the  sea  (i.e.,  adventure  in  America),  the 
Church,  and  the  king's  service — were  the  three  careers 
open  to  a  gentleman  at  a  time  when  trade,  medicine, 
and  even  the  law,  were  plebeian.  Cervantes  began 
life  in  the  household  of  a  great  Italian  ecclesiastic, 
Cardinal  Acquaviva,  in  one  of  those  positions  of 
domestic  service  about  men  of  high  position  which 
were  then,  in  all  countries,  filled  by  gentlemen  of 
small  or  no  fortune.  From  1571  to  1575  he  served  as 
a  soldier  under  Don  John  of  Austria,  and  received 
that  wound  in  the  left  hand  at  the  battle  of  Lepanto 
in  which  he  took  a  noble  pride.  From  1575  to  1580 
he  was  a  prisoner  in  Algiers.  After  his  release  in 
1580  till  his  death  in  1616 — for  thirty-six  long  years 
full  of  misfortune — he  led  the  struggling  life  of  a 
Spanish  gentleman  who  had  no  fortune,  no  interest, 
no  command  of  the  arts  which  ingratiate  a  dependent 

misfortune  of  becoming  the  object  of  a  cult  to  the  persons  calling 
themselves  Cervantistas,  who  have  made  it  an  excuse  for  infinite 
scribbling.  A  few  new  facts  of  no  importance  have  been  discov- 
ered, but  Navarrete's  Vida  remains  the  real  authority. 


148      EUROPEAN    LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

with  a  superior.  At  the  very  end  he  may  have  enjoyed 
some  measure  of  comparative  ease,  but  few  men  of 
letters  have  been  poorer.  Most  men  of  his  class  were 
no  richer  than  himself, — for  Spain  was  a  very  poor 
country,  and  mere  poverty  was  deprived  of  its  worst 
sting  when  men  ranked  by  birth  and  not  by  their 
possessions.  No  want  of  means  could  cause  a  noble 
to  be  other  than  the  social  superior  of  the  merely  rich 
man,  while  the  Church  had  been  only  too  successful 
in  investing  poverty  with  a  certain  sanctity.  Yet 
though  there  were  alleviations,  the  lot  of  Cervantes 
was  a  hard  one,  embittered  by  disappointments  and 
imprisonments,  which  seem  to  have  been  chiefly  due 
to  the  clumsy  brutality  of  the  Spanish  judicial  system. 
All  this  he  bore  with  that  dignity  in  misfortune  which 
is  one  of  the  finest  features  in  the  character  of  the 
Spaniard,  and  with  a  cheerful  courage  all  his  own. 
Everything  known  of  his  life  shows  that  he  possessed 
two  of  the  finest  qualities  which  can  support  a  man  in 
a  life  of  hardship — pride  and  a  sweet  temper. 

The  written  work  of  Cervantes  is  divided  in  a  way 

not  unexampled  in  literature,  but  nowhere  seen  to  the 

same  extent  except  in  the  case  of  Prevost, 

J I  is  work. 

a  far  smaller,  but  a  real,  genius.  If  he 
had  left  nothing  but  Don  Quixote,  his  place  in  litera- 
ture would  be  what  it  is.  If  he  had  not  written  his 
one  masterpiece,  he  would  have  passed  unnoticed  ;  and 
there  would  have  been  no  reason  why  he  should  have 
been  remembered,  unless  it  were  with  Bermudez  and 
Virues,  as  one  of  the  forerunners  of  Lope  who  made 
vague,  ill  -  directed  experiments  in  the  childhood  of 


SPANISH   PROSE   ROMANCE.  149 

Spanish  dramatic  literature.  Even  the  Novelets  Ejem- 
plares,  though  they  possess  a  greater  measure  of  his 
qualities  than  any  part  of  his  literary  inheritance, 
other  than  Don  Quieote  and  his  erifremeses,  are  mainly 
interesting  because  they  are  his.  Other  Spaniards  did 
such  things  as  well  as  he,  or  better,  but  none  have 
approached  Don  Quixote.  The  difference  is  not  in 
degree,  it  is  in  kind. 

We  may,  then,  pass  rapidly  over  the  minor  things. 
It  is  to-  be  noted  that  his  natural  inclination  was 
The  minor  n°t  towards  letters,  but  to  arms.  When 
things.  a  mere  DOy  he  did,  indeed,  write  some 
verses  on  the  death  of  Isabelle  of  Valois,  the  wife  of 
Philip  II.,  but  they  were  school  exercises  written  at 
the  instigation  of  his  master,  Juan  Lopez  de  Hoyos, 
and  published  by  him.  Like  Sir  Walter  Scott,  he 
believed  in  the  greater  nobility  of  the  life  of  action, 
and  more  particularly  in  the  superiority  of  the  "  noble 
profession  of  arms."  If  he  could  have  had  his  choice 
it  would  have  been  to  serve  the  king,  and  more  espe- 
cially to  serve  him  in  the  reconquest  of  Northern 
Africa  from  the  Mahometans.  He  was  driven  to 
write  by  mere  necessity,  and  the  want  of  what  he 
would  fain  have  had.  During  his  captivity  in  Algiers 
he  made  plays  for  the  amusement  of  his  fellow -prison- 
ers. After  his  release,  when  he  was  again  employed 
as  a  soldier  in  the  conquest  of  Portugal,  in  1580  he 
wrote  his  unfinished  pastoral,  the  Galatea.  He  was 
married  in  1584,  and  established  in  Madrid.  At  this 
period  he  wrote  many  plays,  now  lost,  and  two  which 
have    survived.      The    Trato   de   Argel,   or   'Life    in 


150      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

Algiers,'  has  some  biographical  interest,  and  some 
general  value  as  a  picture  of  the  pirate  stronghold, 
but  is  valuable  on  these  grounds  only.  The  Numancia 
belongs  to  the  class  of  works  describable  in  the  good 
sense  as  curious.  It  is  a  long  dialogued  poem  divided 
into  scenes  and  acts,  on  the  siege  of  Numantia  by 
Scipio,  and  is  not  without  a  certain  grandiose  force. 
As  a  play  it  shows  that  the  Spanish  drama  had  not 
found  its  way,  and  that  Cervantes  was  not  to  be  its 
guide.  It  struggles  between  imitation  of  the  mystery, 
vague  efforts  to  follow  an  ill-understood  classic  model, 
and  attempt  to  strike  a  new  and  native  path  which 
the  author  could  nowhere  find.  Then  comes  a  long 
interval,  during  which  Lope  was  sweeping  all  rivals 
from  the  stage,  and  Cervantes,  in  his  own  phrase, 
was  buried  "in  the  silence  of  oblivion."  He  was 
struggling  for  mere  subsistence,  working  as  a  clerk 
under  the  Commissary  of  the  Indian  fleet,  collecting 
rents  for  the  Knights  of  St  John,  and  finally,  as  it 
would  seem,  supporting  himself,  his  wife,  a  natural 
daughter  born  to  him  in  Portugal  before  his  marriage, 
and  a  sister,  by  the  trade  of  cscribiente  at  Valladolid. 
The  escribiente,  still  a  recognised  workman  in  Spain, 
writes  letters  for  those  who  cannot  write  for  them- 
selves. 

He  never  quite  lost  his  connection  with  literature. 
A  few  commendatory  verses  in  the  books  of  friends, 
and  other  slight  traces,  remain  to  show  that  in  the 
intervals  of  the  work  by  which  he  lived  he  endeavoured 
to  keep  a  place  among  the  poets  and  dramatists  of  the 
time.     During  these  years  lie  wrote  the  first  part  of 


SPANISH   PKOSE   ROMANCE.  151 

Don  Quixote.  It  appeared  in  1605,  but,  according  to 
the  usual  practice,  had  been  shown  to  friends  in  manu- 
script. His  last  years  were  spent  in  Madrid.  How 
he  lived  must  remain  a  mystery.  The  Bon  Quixote, 
was  popular,  but  copyrights  were  then  not  lucrative, 
even  if  they  could  be  said  to  exist.  He  again  tried  the 
stage,  and  was  again  unsuccessful.  In  1613  he  pub- 
lished the  Novelets  Ejemplares,  a  collection  of  short 
stories,  partly  on  the  picaresque,  partly  on  an  Italian, 
model.  During  the  following  year  he  brought  out  the 
Voyage  to  Parnassus,  a  verse  review  of  the  poets  of  his 
time,  a  common  form  of  literary  exercise,  and  not  a 
good  specimen  of  its  kind.  In  1614  he  was  provoked 
by  the  false  second  part  of  Don  Quixote.  This  was  a 
form  of  literary  meanness  from  which  Mateo  Aleman 
had  already  suffered,  but  Cervantes  had  particular 
cause  to  be  angry.  The  continuer  of  Guzman  cle 
Alfarache  appears  to  have  been  only  an  impudent 
plagiarist,  but  the  writer  who  continued  Don  Quixote 
was  obviously  animated  by  personal  hostility.  He  de- 
scended to  a  grovelling  sneer  at  Cervantes'  wounded 
hand.  It  has  been  guessed  that  this  is  another  chapter 
in  the  miserable  history  of  the  quarrels  of  authors. 
Avellaneda,  as  the  author  of  the  false  second  part 
called  himself,  is  supposed  to  have  acted  on  the  in- 
stigation of  Lope  de  Vega,  who  is  known  to  have  had 
no  friendly  feelings  for  Cervantes.  The  trick,  which 
was  as  clumsy  as  it  was  spiteful,  probably  hastened 
the  appearance  of  the  genuine  second  part.  It  un- 
doubtedly had  some  influence  on  the  form,  for  it  in- 
duced Cervantes  to  alter  the  course  of  the  story,  in 


152      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

order  to  make  the  two  as  unlike  as  possible.  Perhaps 
it  decided  the  author  to  kill  the  hero  lest  another 
should  murder  him.  The  second  part  was  printed  in 
1615.  Cervantes  died  in  the  next  year.  Cheerful 
and  hopeful  to  the  end,  even  when  "  his  foot  was  in 
stirrup"  for  the  last  journey,  he  had  prepared  his 
Persiles  y  Sigismunda  for  the  press  before  he  died. 
This  was  meant  to  be  a  model  of  what  a  tale  of  ad- 
venture might  be,  and  was  written  with  more  care  in 
the  formal  and  mechanical  parts  than  he  gave  to  Don 
Quixote;  but,  like  almost  all  he  is  known  to  have 
done  with  deliberate  literary  intentions,  it  is  dull  and 
lifeless. 

There  is  a  difficulty  in  speaking  of  Don  Quixote. 
One   has   to   come   after  Fielding  and  Scott,  Heine, 

Thackeray,  and  Sainte-Beuve,  not  to  men- 
Don  Quixote.     .  .         _  _  . 

tion   many   others   hardly  less   illustrious. 

These  are  great  names,  and  it  may  seem  that  after 

they  have  spoken  there  is  nothing  left  to  say.     The 

first    duty    which    this    position    imposes    is    not    to 

endeavour   deliberately  to   be   different,   in  the  vain 

hope    of   attaining    originality.      But    the    cloud    of 

witnesses   who    might    be    summoned    to    prove   the 

enduring  interest  of  Don  Quixote  is  itself  a  part  of 

the  critical  history  of  the  book,  and  a  tribute  to  its 

solitary  place  in  Spanish  literature.     The  ascetic  and 

so-called  mystic  writers  had  their  day  of  influence 

among  us  in  the  seventeenth  century.     Crashaw  alone 

is  enough  to  prove  that  here,  and  in  a  certain  section 

of  English  life  and  literature,  Santa  Teresa  and  Juan 


SPANISH    PEOSE    ROMANCE.  153 

de  la  Cruz  were  living  forces.  Quevedo  had  his  day, 
and  the  Novela  de  Picaros  their  following.  During 
the  romantic  movement,  the  dramatists  were  much 
in  men's  mouths.  But  in  each  case  the  Spaniard 
remained  only  for  a  time.  Calderon  once  had  his 
place  in  Lord  Tennyson's  Palace  of  Art,  but  he  fell 
out,  and  that  has  been  the  fate  of  all  things  Spanish 
in  literature.  They  have  given  an  indication,  have 
been  used — and  forgotten,  or  they  have  been  welcomed 
as  strange,  mysterious,  probably  beautiful,  and  then 
silently  dropped  as  too  exclusively  Spanish,  too  entirely 
belonging  to  a  long  past  century.  But  Don  Quixote 
has  been  always  with  us  since  Shelton's  translation 
of  the  first  part  appeared  in  1612.  This  of  itself  is 
proof  enough  that  there  is  something  in  Don  Quixote 
which  is  absent  from  other  Spanish  work,  whether  his 
own  or  that  of  other  men. 

No  words  need  be  wasted  in  controverting  the 
guesses  of  those  who  wish  to  account  for  the  great- 
ness of  a  great  piece  of  literature  by  some  hidden 
quality  not  literary.  They  have  ranged  from  the 
fantastic  supposition  that  Cervantes  was  ridiculing 
Charles  V.  down  to  the  amazing  notion  that  he  was 
attacking  the  Church.  Nor  need  much  respect  be 
shown  to  the  truth  that  Don  Quixote  was  meant  to 
make  fun  of  the  books  of  chivalry.  This  would  be 
self-evident  even  if  Cervantes  had  not  said  so.  It 
may  be  that  this  was  all  he  meant,  and  then  he 
builded  better  than  he  knew.  The  work  of  burlesque, 
though   often    necessary,   and,   when    decently   done, 


154      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

amusing,  is  essentially  of  the  lower  order.  In  this 
case  it  was  not  necessary,  for  the  Libros  de  Caballerias 
were  already  dying  out  before  the  sordid  rivalry  of 
the  Novelets  de  Picaros.  It  was  the  less  necessary, 
because  it  was  no  reform.  The  Spain  of  the  Libros 
de  Caballerias  was  the  Spain  of  Santa  Teresa  and 
Luis  de  Leon,  of  the  great  scholars  of  the  stamp  of 
Francisco  Sanchez  El  Brocense,  of  Diego  de  Mendoza, 
of  Cortes  and  Pizarro  and  Mondragon  —  the  Spain 
which  Brantome  saw,  "  brave,  bravache  et  vallereuse 
et  de  belles  paroles  proferees  a  rimproviste."  It  was 
a  better  country  than  that  in  which  the  Count  Duke 
of  Olivares  had  to  complain  that  he  could  find  "no 
men."  The  follies  of  the  Libros  de  Caballerias  were  a 
small  matter.  It  was  not  a  small  matter  that  a  nation 
should  replace  Amadis  of  Gaul  by  Paul  of  Segovia, 
should  pass  from  the  lofty  romantic  spirit  of  Garcia 
Ordones  to  the  carcajada — the  coarse,  braying,  animal, 
and  loveless  guffaw  of  Quevedo. 

In  so  far  as  Cervantes  forwarded  that  change  he 
did  evil  and  not  good.  He  did  help  to  laugh  Spain's 
chivalry  away.  But  in  truth  it  was  dying,  and  the 
change  would  have  come  without  him.  He  is  great  in 
literature,  because  while  consciously  doing  a  very  small, 
unnecessary,  and  partially  harmful  thing,  lie  created  a 
masterpiece  of  that  rare  and  fine  faculty  which  while 
thinking  in  jest  still  feels  in  earnest  (the  definition  of 
what  is,  it  may  be,  undefinable  is  taken  from  Miss 
Anne  Evans),  and  which  we  call  humour.  Elsewhere 
in  Spanish  literature  we  find   a  type  fixed   and   un- 


SPANISH   PROSE   ROMANCE.  155 

varying,  or  even  a  mere  puppet,  met  through  a 
succession  of  events,  and  moved  about  by  them.  In 
Don  Quixote  we  have  two  characters  acting  on  one 
another,  and  producing  the  story  from  within.  And 
these  two  characters  are  types  of  immortal  truth — 
the  one  a  gentleman,  brave,  humane,  courteous,  of 
good  faculty,  for  whom  a  slight  madness  has  made 
the  whole  world  fantastic ;  the  other  an  average 
human  being,  selfish,  not  over-brave,  though  no  mere 
coward,  and  ignorant,  yet  not  unkindly,  nor  in- 
capable of  loyalty,  and  withal  shrewd  in  what  his 
limited  vision  can  see  when  he  is  not  blinded  by  his 
greed.  The  continual  collisions  of  these  two  with 
the  real  world  make  the  story  of  Don  Quixote.  Cer- 
vantes had  a  fine  inventive  power,  the  adventures  are 
numerous  and  varied,  yet  the  charm  lies  not  in  the 
incidents,  but  in  the  reality  and  the  sympathetic 
quality  of  the  persons.  We  have  no  grinning  world 
of  masks  made  according  to  a  formula.  The  country 
gentlemen,  priests,  barbers,  shepherds,  innkeepers, 
tavern  wenches,  lady's  -  maids,  domestic  curates, 
nobles,  and  officials  are  living  human  beings,  true  to 
the  Spain  of  the  day  no  doubt,  but  also  true  to  the 
humanity  which  endures  for  ever,  and  therefore  in- 
telligible to  all  times.  In  the  midst  is  honest  greedy 
Sancho  with  his  peering  eyes,  so  shrewd,  and  withal 
so  capable  of  folly,  the  critic,  and  also  the  dupe  of 
the  half-crazed  dreamer,  by  whom  he  rides,  and  will 
ride,  as  long  as  humanity  endures,  in  this  book,  and 
under  every  varying  outward  form  in  the  real  earth. 


156      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

As  for  Don  Quixote,  is  he  not  the  elder  brother  of  Sir 
Eoger  de  Coverley,  of  Matthew  Bramble,  of  Parson 
Adams,  of  Bradwardine,  of  Colonel  Newcome,  and  Mr 
Chucks,  the  brave,  gentle,  not  over- clever,  men  we 
love  all  the  more  because  we  laugh  at  them  very 
tenderly  ? 1 

1  The  fame  and  the  excellence  of  Le  Diable  Boiteux  of  Le  Sage 
entitle  the  author  of  El  Diablo  Cojuelo  to  notice  in  this  chapter. 
Luis  Velez  de  Guevara  (1572  or  1574-1644)  of  Ecija  was  a  fertile 
dramatist.  His  Diablo  Cojuelo,  published  in  1641,  supplied  the 
starting-point,  and  the  matter  but  not  the  form,  of  the  two  first 
chapters  of  Le  Diable  Boiteux.  There  is  nothing  answering  to  the 
famous  "  Apres  cela  on  nous  reconcilia  ;  nous  nous  embrassames  ; 
depuis  ce  tems  la  nous  sommes  ennemis  mortels. "  The  matter  of  the 
Diablo  Cojuelo  is  akin  to  the  Visions  of  Quevedo,  and  the  style  is 
very  idiomatic. 


157 


CHAPTEK  VI. 

SPAIN — HISTORIANS,   MISCELLANEOUS   WRITERS,   AND 
THE   MYSTICS. 

SPANISH  HISTORIANS — HISTORIES  OF  PARTICULAR  EVENTS — EARLY  HIS- 
TORIANS OP  THE  INDIES — GENERAL  HISTORIANS  OP  THE  INDIES — 
GOMARA,  OVIEDO,  LAS  CASAS,  HERRERA,  THE  INC  A  GARCILASO — MEN- 
DOZA,  MONCADA,  AND  MELO  —  GENERAL  HISTORIES  —  OCAMPO, 
ZURITA,  MORALES  —  MARIANA —  THE  DECADENCE  —  SOLIS  —  MIS- 
CELLANEOUS WRITERS  —  GRACIAN  AND  THE  PREVALENCE  OF  GON- 
GORISM — THE  MYSTICS — SPANISH  MYSTICISM — THE  INFLUENCE  OF 
THE  INQUISITION  ON  SPANISH  RELIGIOUS  LITERATURE — MALON  DE 
CHAIDE — JUAN  DE  AVILA — LUIS  DE  GRANADA — LUIS  DE  LEON — 
SANTA  TERESA  —  JUAN  DE  LA  CRUZ  —  DECADENCE  OF  THE  MYSTIC 
WRITERS. 

It  was  natural  that  a  very  active  time  of  great  literary 
vigour  should  be  rich  in  historians.  Spanish  litera- 
ture is,  indeed,  fertile  in  historical  narratives  of  con- 
temporary events  written  by  eyewitnesses,  and  not 
less  in  authoritative  narratives,  the  work  of  almost 
contemporary  authors.  A  people  so  proud  of  the 
present  could  not  be  indifferent  to  the  past.  The 
Spaniard  least  of  all;  for  he  is,  in  his  own  phrase, 
linajudo — proud  of  his  lineage — not  less  concerned  to 
show  that  he  had  ancestors  than  to  convince  the 
world  of  his  greatness.     Thus  the  sixteenth  century, 


158      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

and  the  early  years  of  the  seventeenth,  saw  the  pro- 
SpaMdi  duction  of  a  very  important  Spanish  his- 
historians.  torical  literature.  It  followed  the  fortunes 
of  the  country  with  curious  exactness.  Every  great 
campaign,  every  great  achievement  in  America  during 
the  reign  of  Charles  V.,  has  been  well  and  amply 
described.  The  reign  of  Philip  II.  is  equally  well  re- 
corded by  contemporaries,  and  was  the  period  of  the 
great  general  histories  of  Morales,  Zurita,  and  Mariana. 
But  as  the  seventeenth  century  drew  on,  there  was 
less  and  less  which  the  Spaniard  cared  to  record,  till 
after  the  revolt  of  Catalonia  and  the  separation  of 
Portugal  in  1640  we  come  to  a  period  of  entire 
silence.  The  exhaustion  of  the  national  genius  was 
felt  here  as  elsewhere.  When  the  voice  of  Spanish 
history  was  last  heard,  it  was  in  the  conquest  of 
Mexico  by  Antonio  de  Solis — the  work  of  an  accom- 
plished man  of  letters  who  looked  back  over  the 
disasters  of  his  own  time  to  the  more  glorious  achieve- 
ment of  the  past. 

Much  of  the  historical  writing  of  the  great  epoch — 
the  histories  of  religious  orders,  of  which  there  are 
many,  and  of  towns,  of  which  there  not  a  few,  and 
genealogical  histories,  also  numerous  and  valuable — 
does  not,  properly  speaking,  belong  to  literature.  But 
it  would  be  a  very  pedantic  interpretation  of  the  word 
which  would  exclude  the  Comentario  de  la  Guerra  de 
Alemana 1  of  Luis  de  Avila  y  Zufiiga.     It  is  an  account 

1  This  and  most  of  the  other  works  mentioned  here  will  be  found 
in  the  two  volumes  of  Jlistoriadores  de  Succsos  Particvtlares  in  the 
Biblioteca  de  Ribadcncyra,  vols.  xxi.  and  xxviii. 


SPAIN — HISTORIANS.  159 

of  the  war  of  the  Smalkaldian  League,  written  by  an 
eyewitness  who  served  the  emperor,  and  attended  him 
in  his  retirement  at  Yuste.  The  merit  of  this,  and 
many  other  books  of  the  same  order,  lies  less  in  any 

beauty  of  style  they  possess  than  in  the 
particular      interest  which  attaches  to  the  evidence  of 

capable  men  who  saw  great  events.  Luis 
de  Avila  is  also  valuable  because  he  gives  expression 
to  that  pride  and  ambition  of  the  emperor's  Spanish 
followers,  who  really  dreamt  that  they  were  help- 
ing towards  the  establishment  of  a  universal  empire. 
Another  writer  of  the  same  stamp,  who  lived  when 
the  fortune  of  Spain  had  reached  its  height  and  was 
beginning  to  turn,  was  Don  Bernardino  de  Mendoza,  a 
most  typical  Spaniard  of  his  time.  He  was  a  soldier 
of  the  school  of  the  Duke  of  Alva,  a  cavalry  officer  of 
distinction,  was  ambassador  in  England  some  years 
before  the  Armada,  and  in  France  during  that  great 
passage  in  history.  He  died  at  a  great  age,  blind  and 
"  in  religion,"  having  lived  the  full  life  of  a  fighting 
pious  Spaniard  who  could  use  both  sword  and  pen. 
He  wrote  commentaries  on  the  war  in  the  Low  Coun- 
tries between  1566  and  1577,  and  a  treatise  on  the 
Theory  and  Practice  of  War.  The  commentaries  were 
published  in  1592.  The  treatise  had  appeared  in  1577. 
The  great  subject  of  the  Low  Country  wars  of  a  some- 
what later  period — 1588-1599 — was  also  treated  by 
another  Spaniard  of  the  same  stamp  as  Don  Bernar- 
dino. This  was  Don  Carlos  Coloma,  Marquis  of 
Espinar,  who  also  was  both  soldier,  diplomatist 
(he  came  on  an  embassy  to  England  in  the  reign  of 


160      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

James  I.),  and  man  of  letters.     Besides  his  Guerras  de 
los  Paises  Bajos  he  made  a  translation  of  Tacitus. 

Contemporary  with  these  and  less  famous  authors 
of  commentaries  is  the  long  line  of  writers  usually 
classed  together  by  the  Spaniards  as  Early  Historians 
of  the  Indies.1  The  desire  to  record  what  they  had 
seen  and  suffered  was  strong  in  the  conquistador  es, 
and  a  long  list  might  be  made  of  their  names.  Only 
„  ,   „         the  most  famous   can  be  mentioned  here. 

Early  His- 
torians of  the    No  more  amazing  story  of  shipwreck  and 

Indies.  •  ,  1,11 

misery  among  savages  has  ever  been  told 
than  in  the  Naufragios  of  Alvar  Nunez  Cabeza  de 
Vaca.  He  was  wrecked  in  Florida,  and  remained 
wandering  among  the  native  tribes  for  ten  years, 
1527-1537.  A  power  of  endurance,  wellnigh  more 
than  human,  was  required  to  bear  up  against  all  he 
suffered ;  but  he  lived  to  hold  a  governorship  in  the 
Kio  de  la  Plata,  of  which  also  he  has  left  an  account. 
A  much  gayer  and  a  more  famous  book  is  the  account 
of  the  conquest  of  Mexico  written  by  Bernal  Diaz  del 
Castillo,  one  of  the  companions  of  Cortes,  who  survived 
nearly  all  his  brothers  in  arms,  and  died  at  a  great 
age  in  Guatemala,  on  the  estate  he  had  won  with  his 
sword.  His  True  History  was  provoked  by  the  earlier 
narrative  of  Gomara,  and  was  written  to  vindicate  the 
honour  due  to  himself  and  his  fellow -adventurers, 
which  he  thought  had  been  unduly  sacrificed  by  the 
official  historian  of  Cortes.  Bernal  Diaz  is  a  Spanish 
Monluc,  but  both  ruder  and  more  mediaeval  than  the 

1  The  Hittoriadores  Primitcvos  de  Indias  fill  two  volumes  — xxii. 
and  xxvi. — in  the  Biblioteca  de  Ribadcncyra. 


SPAIN — HISTORIANS.  161 

inimitable  Gascon.  Francisco  de  Jerez,  Augustin  de 
Zarate,  and  Pedro  Cieza  de  Leon  (the  work  of  the 
last-named  has  only  been  wholly  published  in  our 
own  time)  give  the  Peruvian  half  of  that  wonderful 
generation  of  conquest. 

Beside  these,  the  actual  eyewitnesses  of  events,  are 
to  be  put  the  general  historians  of  the  Indies.  The 
General  His  ^TS^  w^°  Pu^lished  his  work  complete  was 
torianso/the  Francisco  Lopez  de  Gomara.  He  was  born 
in  1510,  too  late  to  share  in  the  con- 
quest, and  was,  in  fact,  a  man  of  letters,  who  travelled, 
indeed,  but  only  in  Italy.  The  accident  that  he  was 
secretary  to  Cortes  when  he  had  returned  for  the  last 
time  to  Spain  probably  directed  Gomara's  studies. 
He  was  accused  of  knowing  nothing  of  many  parts 
of  his  subject  except  what  Cortes  had  told  him,  and 
of  having  distorted  truth  in  the  interest  of  his  patron. 
But  Gomara  wrote  well,  and  the  immense  contem- 
porary interest  in  the  subject  gave  his  History  of  the 
Indies  and  his  Chronicle  of  New  Spain,  which  is  a 
panegyric  of  Cortes,  a  great  vogue.  They  first  ap- 
peared in  1552,  1553,  and  1554.  An  older  man,  and 
a  much  greater  authority,  was  Gonzalo  Fernandez  de 
Oviedo  y  Valdes  (1478  - 1557),  whose  General  and 
Natural  History  of  the  Indies  was  partly  published 
in  1535,  before  Gomara's.  But  the  author  kept  his 
work  in  hand  till  his  death,  and  appears  to  have  made 
corrections  and  additions  to  the  last.1     Oviedo  was  in 

1  The  standard  edition  of  the  Historia  General  y  Natural  de  las  Indias, 
istas  y  tierrafirrne  del  Mar  Oceano,  is  that  in  four  volumes  folio,  edited 
by  Don  Amador  de  los  Rios  for  the  Academy  of  History  in  1851-1855. 

L 


1G2       EUKOPEAN    LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

the  West  Indies  in  official  posts  for  forty  years,  begin- 
ning in  1513,  and  was  therefore  a  contemporary  of, 
though  not  a  partaker  in,  the  great  conquests.  He  is  a 
garrulous  writer  of  no  great  force  of  mind,  much  more 
a  chronicler  than  a  historian.  There  are  two  general 
historians  of  the  Indies  of  very  different  value  from 
Oviedo.  The  first  is  the  Bishop  of  Chiapa,  the  justly 
G6mara,oviedo,  famous  Bartolome  de  las  Casas(1474?-1566), 
^tlTinT  who  applied  the  critics  of  his  country- 
Garciiaso.  men  (most  of  whom  afterwards  showed  that 
they  wanted  only  the  opportunity  in  order  to  equal 
the  crimes)  with  weapons  by  his  famous  Very  Brief 
Account  of  the  Ruin  of  the  Indies.  This,  first  printed 
in  1542,  was  reprinted  with  other  tracts  written  for 
the  honourable  purpose  of  defending  the  unfortunate 
Indians  from  oppression  in  1552,  and  was  made 
known  to  all  Europe  in  translations.  The  general 
History  of  the  Indies,  which  he  wrote  during  his  old 
age,  remained  unprinted  till  it  was  included  in  the 
Collection  of  inedited  Documents  for  the  History  of  Spain 
published  by  the  Spanish  Government.1  Las  Casas 
was  a  man  of  a  stamp  not  unfamiliar  to  ourselves. 
His  hatred  of  cruelty  was  equally  vehement  and  sin- 
cere. In  his  perfectly  genuine  horror  for  the  excesses 
of  his  countrymen,  which  are  not  to  be  denied,  he 
sometimes  exaggerated  and  was  sometimes  unjust. 
He  was  perhaps  inevitably  emotional  in  his  style, 
yet  the  fact  that  he  had  principle  and  passion  and  a 
cause  to  plead,  gives  his  book  a  marked  superiority 

1  Coleccion  de  Documentos  incditos  para  la  Historia  de  Espafta,  vols, 
hdi.-lxvi. 


SPAIN — HISTORIANS.  163 

over  the  mainly  chronicle  work  of  Gomara  and 
Oviedo.  Antonio  de  Herrera  (1549-1625)  was  a  very 
different  man,  an  official  historian — he  was  histori- 
ographer of  the  Indies — who  served  the  king  as  liter- 
ary advocate,  and  was  supplied  with  good  information. 
His  General  History  of  the  Deeds  of  the  Castilians  in 
the  Islands  and  Mainland  of  the  Ocean  Sea  was  pub- 
lished in  1601-1615  at  Madrid.  While  compiling  this 
great  book,  the  most  valuable  part  of  his  work,  Herrera 
was  also  engaged  in  drawing  up  a  General  History  of 
the  World  in  the  time  of  our  Lord  the  King  Philip  II, 
and  other  treatises,  which  are,  in  fact,  statements  on 
behalf  of  the  Government,  and  have  in  historical  liter- 
ature something  like  the  place  of  the  yearly  summaries 
in  the  old  Annual  Register.  Herrera's  style  was  busi- 
nesslike, but  he  can  never  have  been  read  for  the 
pleasure  of  reading  him.  With  these  writers  may  be 
placed  the  Inca  Garcilaso  de  la  Vega  (1540-1616),  an 
attractive  and  rather  pathetic  figure.  His  father  was 
one  of  the  conquistador -es,  and  his  mother  belonged  to 
the  sacred  Inca  race.  The  son  was  almost  equally 
proud  of  his  pedigree  on  both  sides.  The  Inca  Garci- 
laso, as  he  is  always  called,  did  some  other  literary 
work,  including  a  translation  of  the  once  famous 
Dialogues  on  Love  by  Leon  Hebreo,  an  echo  of  the 
Florentine  Platonists,  written  in  Italian  by  the  exiled 
Spanish  Jew,  Juda  Abarbanel,  but  he  is  best  known 
by  the  Commentaries  on  Peru.  In  this  work,  published 
in  two  parts  in  1609  and  1617,  he  contrived  to  re- 
concile a  genuine  Christian  zeal  and  an  equally 
genuine    Castilian    pride    of    descent   with  a   tender 


164      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

memory  of  his  mother's  people.  Garcilaso,  though 
weak  and  garrulous,  is  touching,  and  his  commentaries 
have  been  the  great  storehouse  of  the  more  poetic 
legends  told  of  the  Incas.1 

Though  writers  who  recorded  what  they  had  seen, 
and  others  who  only  recorded  what  had  happened  in 
their  time,  or  near  it,  cannot  be  wholly  classed  to- 
gether, yet  the  authors  named  above  have  certain 
qualities  in  common.  Of  those  mentioned  here,  almost 
all  wrote  in  a  straightforward  manly  fashion,  with 
little  straining  after  effect,  and  a  manifest  desire  to 
tell  the  truth.  There  is  little  in  them  of  that  over- 
weening arrogance  which  has  become  associated  with 
the  character  of  the  Spaniard.  There  is  no  want  of 
pride,  which  was,  indeed,  amply  justified  by  the 
stories  they  had  to  tell,  but  little  of  the  vanity  so 
common  in  the  time  of  Spain's  decadence. 

The  account  of  the  rebellion  of  the  Moriscoes  written 
by  Don  Diego  de  Mendoza  supplies  a  link  between 
the  series  of  histories  just  named  and  the  histories 
which  belong  wholly  to  learning  and  literature.  The 
subject  was  contemporary  to  the  author,  and  members 
of  his  family  took  an  active  part  in  the  events  ;  but 
Don  Diego  had  a  literary  ambition  which  is  only  too 
visible.  It  was  plainly  his  intention  to  make  a  careful 
Mendoza,  Man-  C0VJ  of  Latin  models— chiefly  Sallust— and 
coda,  and  Meio.  jn  one  passage  he  slavishly  follows  the  ac- 
count given  by  Tacitus  of  the  discovery  of  the  remains 
of  the  legions  of  Varus,  by  the  soldiers  of  Germanicus. 

1  The  commentaries  of  the  Inca  Garcilaso  were  early  translated  into 
English,  and  have  been  reprinted  by  the  Hakluyt  Society. 


SPAIN — HISTOKIANS.  165 

But  there  was  an  intrinsic  force  in  Diego  de  Mendoza 
which  saved  him  from  falling  into  a  mere  school 
exercise,  and  though  the  mould  of  sentence  is  too 
much  taken  from  the  Latin,  the  vocabulary  is  very- 
pure  Castilian.  He  protests  in  one  place  against  the 
use  of  the  foreign  word  centinela  for  a  sentinel,  in 
place  of  the  old  Spanish  atalaya  for  the  watch  by  day, 
and  escucha  (listen)  for  the  watch  by  night.  Tlie  Ex- 
pedition of  the  Catalans  and  Aragonese  against  the 
Turks  and  Greeks  of  Francisco  de  Moncada,  Count  of 
Osona  (1635),  which  Gibbon  said  he  had  read  with 
pleasure,  has  a  great  reputation  among  the  Span- 
iards. It  is  certainly  a  well  -  written  account  of 
the  expedition  of  the  Free  Companions  who  were 
led  by  Eoger  de  Flor  to  serve  under  the  Paleologi 
against  the  Turks,  and  who,  after  making  them- 
selves intolerable  to  their  employers,  ended  by  ex- 
pelling the  Dukes  of  Athens  of  the  house  of  Brienne 
from  their  duchy,  and  then  held  it  for  the  crown 
of  Aragon.  Moncada  was  a  viceroy  and  general 
who  served  with  high  distinction,  and  a  very  ac- 
complished man  of  literary  tastes ;  but  his  narra- 
tive, which  is  very  brief,  is  mainly  a  good  Castilian 
version  of  the  Catalan  Chronicle  of  Eamon  Mun- 
taner,  and  has,  in  a  phrase  dear  to  Mr  Hallam,  been 
praised  to  the  full  extent  of  its  merits.  It  appeared  in 
1623,  twelve  years  before  the  death  of  the  author,  who 
was  then  viceroy  in  Lombardy.  A  work  on  the  same 
scale  as  Moncada's,  which  has  been  praised  much 
beyond  its  merits,  is  the  account  of  the  revolt  of  the 
Catalans   against   Philip   IV.   in    1640   by  Francisco 


166      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

Manuel  de  Melo.  It  contains  only  the  beginning  of 
the  war,  and  though  the  author  seems  to  promise  a 
continuation,  he  never  went  further.  The  book  was 
published  in  1645.  Melo  had  a  curious  literary  history. 
He  was  a  Portuguese  in  the  Spanish  service,  and  a 
kinsman  of  the  unfortunate  general  who  lost  the 
battle  of  Eocroi.  He  lived  long,  wrote  much,  and  it 
was  his  fortune  to  survive  Gongorism.  But  his  History 
of  the  Troubles,  Secession,  and  War  of  Catalonia  was 
written  while  he  was  under  a  bad  literary  influence. 
Without  being  exactly  "  Gongorical,"  it  is  written  in 
a  strained,  pretentious,  snappy  style,  which  covers  a 
decided  poverty  of  thought. 

The  great  school  of  Spanish  historians  has  an  un- 
broken descent  from  the  chronicles  of  the  Middle 
General  Ages.  It  had  been  the  custom  of  the 
Histories.  kingS  0f  Castile  from  the  reign  of  Alfonso 
XL  (1350-1369),  surnamed  the  Implacable,  or  "  he  of 
the  Eio  Salado,"  from  the  scene  of  the  battle  in  which 
he  overthrew  the  last  considerable  Moorish  invasion 
of  Spain,  to  appoint  a  chronicler.  With  Florian  de 
Ocampo,  who  held  this  post  under  Charles  V.,  the 
chronicler  became  the  "  historiographer."  He  was  not 
necessarily  a  scholar  and  student  of  the  past,  yet  he 
might  be  if  he  so  pleased,  and  the  spirit  of  the  time  in- 
vited him  to  adopt  the  new  character.  Ocampo  himself 
showed  little  faculty,  though  his  intentions  were  good ; 
but  his  successor,  Ambrosio  de  Morales  (1513-1581), 
was  a  scholar  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word.  It 
was  his  wish  to  write  a  real  history  of  Spain,  based 
on  chronicles  and  records.     But  he  obtained  his  post 


SPAIN — HISTORIANS.  167 

late  in  1570,  and  his  work  is  a  fragment  ending  so 
early  as  1037.  Morales  was  unquestionably  influ- 
ocampo,  zurita,  enced  by  the  example  of  his  friend  Gero- 
Momies.  nimo  de  Zurita,  the  historiographer  of  the 

crown  of  Aragon.  The  unanimous  judgment  of 
scholars  has  recognised  the  right  of  Zurita  to  the 
name  of  historian,  and  even  to  the  honour  of  being 
the  first  of  modern  historians.  His  father  had  been 
physician  to  Ferdinand  the  Catholic,  and  he  was  him- 
self one  of  the  many  secretaries  of  Philip  II.  Zurita, 
who  was  born  in  1512  and  died  in  1580,  was  appointed 
historiographer  of  Aragon  by  the  choice  of  the  Cortes 
in  1548.  For  a  man  with  the  ambition  to  be  a  his- 
torian, the  position  was  enviable.  It  gave  him  inde- 
pendence, a  right  of  access  to  all  records ;  he  had  a 
fine  story  to  tell,  and  as  he  had  no  predecessors,  he 
had  no  need  to  spend  time  in  reading  the  works  of 
others.  Zurita  was  worthy  of  his  fortune.  His 
Annals  of  the  Croivn  of  Aragon'  down  to  the  death  of 
Ferdinand  the  Catholic,  in  six  folio  volumes,  published 
between  1562  and  1580,  has  kept  its  place  as  a  work 
of  scholarship  and  criticism. 

The  great  name  of  Spanish  historical  literature  is 
that  of  Juan  de  Mariana},1  the  Jesuit,  whose  name  once 

„   .  rang   all   over  Europe   for  his  defence  of 

Manana.       — -     .    .  ,        .  ,  

regicide   in  the   treatise   De  Regc,  written 
for  the  benefit  of  his  pupil,  Philip  III.     But  thisjtnd 

his  other  treatises  were  written  in  Latin,  and  never 

1  The  works  of  Mariana  are  in  the  Biblioteca  de  Ribadeneyra,  vols, 
xxx.  and  xxxi. ;  but  it  is  much  more  pleasant  to  read  his  history  in 
the  edition  of  Ibarra,  1780,  2  vols,  folio,  beautifully  printed. 


168      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

translated  by  himself.  His  place  in  Spanish  literature 
is  clue  to  his  history.  Mariana  was  of  the  most  hum- 
ble birth,  for  he  was  a  foundling.  He  was  born  at 
Talavera  in  1536,  and  educated  by  the  Jesuits,  in 
whose  college  in  Sicily  he  taught  for  many  years; 
but  his  later  life  was  spent  in  the  house  of  his  order 
at  Toledo.  His  troubles  with  his  superiors  form  a 
not  very  honourable  passage  in  the  history  of  the 
Jesuits.  The  first  purpose  of  his  great  work  was  to 
make  Europe  acquainted  with  the  past  of  Spain,  and 
he  wrote  in  Latin,  the  universal  language  of  scholar- 
ship. Twenty  of  the  thirty  books  were  published  in 
that  language  in  1572.  But,  unlike  Bacon,  Mari- 
ana did  not  believe  that  the  learned  language  would 
outlive  the  modern  tongues.  He  was  induced  to 
make  a  Castilian  version  of  his  own  Latin,  and 
when  doing  it  he  took  the  freedom  which  even  the 
most  strict  critic  will  allow  to  belong  to  the  trans- 
lator of  his  own  work.  He  enlarged,  corrected,  and 
amended,  till  the  Castilian  history,  which  appeared  in 
1501,  was  almost  a  new  work.  Tour  editions,  further 
enlarged  and  amended,  appeared  before  the  author's 
death  in  1623. 

In  answering  a  minute  critic,  Mariana,  with  an 
audacity  not  perhaps  to  be  excused,  declared  that 
if  he  had  stopped  to  verify  every  small  fact,  Spain 
would  have  waited  for  ever  for  a  history.  This  bold 
avowal  of  his  indifference  to  the  tithings  of  mint  and 
anise  illustrates  sufficiently  the  spirit  in  which  he 
wrote.  He  was  not  a  historical  scholar  in  the  same 
sense  as  Zurita — a  minute  student  of  original  records 


SPAIN — HISTORIANS.  169 

— but  a  man  of  great  learning  and  high  patriotic 
spirit,  who  applied  himself  to  the  making  of  a  work 
of  literature  worthy  of  the  past  of  his  country.  The 
defects  of  the  history  are  patent,  and  one  of  them  is  a 
mere  matter  of  change  of  fashion.  He  took  Livy  for 
a  model,  and  therefore  put  long  speeches  into  the 
mouths  of  his  personages.  This,  however,  was  a  mere 
literary  convention  not  intended  to  deceive  anybody, 
and  not  likely  to  mislead  the  most  uncritical  reader. 
It  was  only  a  now  disused  way  of  giving  what 
the  modern  historian  would  give  in  comment  and 
illustration.  The  same  following  of  Livy  led  him  into 
including  in  his  history,  and  presenting  as  history, 
a  great  deal  of  what  he  knew  to  be  legend,  simply 
because  it  was  picturesque  and  familiar.  Against 
these  defects,  which  from  the  literary  point  of  view 
are  no  defects  at  all,  are  to  be  put  a  fine  style  quite 
uncontaminated  by  the  usual  defects  of  Spanish 
prose,  a  great  power  of  narrative,  and  then  this,  that 
Mariana  gave  the  history  of  his  country  throughout 
antiquity  and  the  Middle  Ages  in  a  lofty  patriotic 
spirit,  which  may  not  interpret  and  explain  ancient 
institutions,  but  does  convey  to  us  a  sense  that  we 
see  an  energetic  people  of  fine  qualities  struggling 
on  to  high  destinies. 

The  fall  from  Mariana  to  any  of  his  contemporaries 

or  successors  is  great.      The    Cisma  de  Inglaterra — 

'  The  English  Schism ' — by  Pedro  de  Eiba- 

Tlie  decadence.       -  .    „.„  ~n+-t\  .  ,  . 

deneyra  (1527-loll),  enjoys  the  reputation 
of  being  a  well-written  account  of  the  great  movement 
by  which  the  English  Church  vindicated  its  indepen- 


170      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

dence  of  the  see  of  Rome,  told  from  the  point  of  view 
of  a  Spanish  Jesuit.  Prudencio  de  Sandoval,  a  distin- 
guished churchman  and  one  of  the  historiographers  of 
the  Crown,  continued  the  general  history  of  Morales, 
and  then  added  to  Mariana  a  life  of  Charles  V.,  which 
is  of  about  the  same  length  as  the  Jesuit's  whole 
history.  Sandoval  shows  what  the  reign  of  the  great 
emperor  looked  like  to  a  learned  Spaniard  of  the  later 
sixteenth  century,  but  it  has  no  great  force  and  no 
merit  of  style.1 


Other  names  might  be  added — Bartolome"  de  Argen- 

sola's  History  of  the  Moluccas  (1609),  the  work  of  a 
pure  man  of  letters  who  wrote  to  please  his  patron, 
and  the  History  of  the  Goths  of  the  diplomatist  Saavedra- 
Fiijardo J  published  at  Munster  in  1649 — but  they  could 
swell  a  list  to  little  purpose.  All^  these  writers^  had 
the  good  fortune  to  write  before  the  invasion  of  Gon- 
gorism,  except  Saavedra-Fajardo,  who  escaped  it  by 
residence  abroad.  Antonio  de  Solis  (1610-1686)  had 
the  honour  of  resisting  the  plague.  If  the  second- 
rate  men  of  a  literature  could  be  dealt  with  at  any 
length  in  our  limits,  Solis  would  be  an  in- 

Solis.  ,  "I  11  TT 

terestmg  figure  to  dwell  on.  He  was  an 
accomplished  man,  who  did  very  creditable  work  both 
as  poet  and  dramatist,  but  in  the  schools  of  other  and 
more  original  writers.  There  are  few  more  melan- 
choly lives  among  the  biographies  of  men  of  letters. 

1  There  is  not,  I  think,  any  modern  edition  of  Sandoval,  whose 
life  of  Charles  V.  first  appeared  in  1604-1606,  since  the  second  edition 
of  Antwerp,  1681.  It  was  translated  and  abridged  in  1703  by  Captain 
John  Stevens,  an  indefatigable  hack  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for 
many  bad  versions  of  Spanish  originals. 


SPAIN — HISTORIANS.  171 

In  spite  of  reputation  and  success,  he  was  always  poor. 
Although  he  held  the  post  of  Cronista  Mayor  of  the 
Indies  in  the  latter  part  of  his  life,  he  died  in  utter 
poverty,  leaving  "  his  soul  to  be  the  heir  of  his  body  " 
— that  is,  giving  orders  that  his  few  belongings  should 
be  sold  to  pay  for  masses.  In  the  general  bankruptcy 
of  Spain  his  salary  was  probably  not  paid.  A  sense 
of  duty  rather  than  an  inclination  to  the  task  may  be 
supposed  to  have  led  him  to  undertake  the  writing  of 
a  book  which  has  always  remained  very  dear  to  the 
Spaniards.  This  is  The  Conquest  of  Mexico,  published 
by  the  help  of  a  friend  in  1684.1  The  excellence  of 
the  style  was  recognised  from  the  first,  and  has  pre- 
served the  reputation  of  the  book.  Yet  it  wants  the 
rude  life  of  the  contemporary  narratives,  and  the 
understanding  of,  or  at  least  strenuous  effort  to  under- 
stand, the  native  side,  which  is  to  be  found  in  Mr 
Prescott.  Flowing  and  eloquent  as  Solis  is,  he  is  also 
somewhat  nerveless.  Perhaps  our  knowledge  of  the 
fact  that  he  stood  on  the  very  verge  of  the  time  when 
the  voice  of  literature  in  Spain  was  to  be  silenced  alto- 
gether makes  the  reader  predisposed  to  find  something 
in  him  of  the  signs  of  exhaustion.  He  closes  the  time 
when  the  Spaniards  wrote  for  themselves,  and  also 
wrote  well. 

Before  closing  this  survey  of  the  great  period  of 
Castilian  literature  by  a  notice,  which  must  necessarily 
be  brief,  of  one  intensely  national  body  of  writers,  some 

1  A  very  finely  printed  edition  of  The  Conquest  of  Mexico,  unfor- 
tunately disfigured  by  silly  plates,  was  published  at  Madrid  by  Sancha 
in  1783. 


172      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

words  must  be  said  about  the  large  class  of  authors  of 
Miscellaneous  miscellaneous  books  belonging  to  the  first 
writers.  haif  0f  the  seventeenth  century.  The  press 
was  active  in  those  years.  Unfortunately  it  was  an 
age  of  oddity  and  extravagance.  Its  dominating  figure 
is  that  |  Baltasar  Gracian  (1601-1658)  to  whom  the 
admiration  of  Sir  M.  Grant  Duff  among  ourselves,  and 
the  whim,  if  not  the  cynicism,  of  Schopenhauer  among 
the  Germans,  have  given  a  limited  revival  of  popularity 
in  our  own  time.  He  was  an  Aragonese  Jesuit,  who 
published  his  books  under  the  name  of  his  brother 
Lorenzo.  Gracian  is  not  uninteresting  as  a  finished 
example  of  all  that  bad  taste  and  pretentiousness  can 
do  to  make  a  man  of  some,  though  by  no  means  con- 
siderable, faculty  quite  worthless.  It  was  his  chosen 
function  to  be  the  critic,  prophet,  and  populariser  of 
Gringorism.  He  wrote  a  treatise  to  expound  the  whole 
secret  of  the  detestable  art  of  saying  everything  in  the 
Jeast  natural  and  perspicuous  manner  possible.1  This 
Aguilcm  y  Arte  cle  Ingenios — '  Wit  and  the  Wits'  Art ' — 
was  not  written  till  he  had  published  a  book  on  The 
Hero  to  show  that  he  had  every  right  to  speak  with 
authority.  Gracian  was  otherwise  a  copious  writer. 
His  Criticon,  translated  into  English  under  the  name 
oKTlie  Spanish  Critic,  by  Paul  Eycaut  in  1681,  about 
thirty  years  after  it  appeared,  is  an  allegory  of  life, 
shown  by  the  adventures  of  a  shipwrecked  Spaniard 
and  a  "natural  man,"  whom  he  finds  on  the  island  of 

1  Part  of  Gracian  is  in  the  JUMiotcca  de  ItiLadencyra,  vol.  Lw.  A 
translation  of  the  Ordculo  Manual  has  been  included  in  The  Golden 
Treasury. 


SPAIN — MISCELLANEOUS   WRITERS.  173 

St  Helena.    It  may  have  helped  Swift  by  showing  him 
how  not  to  write  Gulliver's  Travels.     The 

Gratian  and 

the  prevalence  work  which  has  been  revived  of  late  by 
the  freak  of  Schopenhauer  is  the,  Oraculo 
Manual  y  Arte  de  Pruclencia — 'Hand  (or  Pocket) 
Oracle  and  Art  of  Prudence.'  It  is  a  collection  of 
maxims.  Mr  Morley  went  to  the  extreme  limit  of 
good  nature  when  he  said  that  Gracian  sometimes 
gives  a  neat  turn  to  a  commonplace.  As  a  rule,  his 
maxims  are  examples  of  all  that  maxims  ought  not  to 
be — long,  obscure  by  dint  of  straining  after  epigram- 
matic force,  and  in  substance  of  platitude  all  compact. 
We  soon  find  that  we  are  dealing  with  a  "  haberdasher 
of  small  wares,"  who  is  endeavouring  to  impose  him- 
self upon  us  as  wise  by  dint  of  a  short  obscure  manner 
and  a  made-up  face  of  gravity. 

Gracian  is  worth  singling  out,  not  for  his  merits, 
but  because  he  so  thoroughly  typified  a  something  in 
the  Spaniard  which,  oddly  mixed  with  his  real  humour 
and  sound  sense,  gives  him  a  leaning  to  the  theatrical 
in  the  worst  sense  of  the  word.  When  Shakespeare 
drew  Don  Adriano  de  Armado,  the  fantastical  Spaniard, 
he  was  not  laughing  at  random  at  the  foreigner.  And 
this  side  of  the  people  was  never  more  conspicuous 
than  in  the  middle  seventeenth  century.  It  came  out 
everywhere,  from  serious  treatises  on  politics  down 
to  the  fencing -book  of  the  egregious  Don  Luis  de 
Narvaez  de  Pacheco.  It  was  not  that  Spain  wanted 
for  able  men.  Diego  de  Saavedra-Fajardo,  the  author 
of  the  history  of  the  Goths,  and  of  a  curious  book  of 
emblems  called  Umpresas  Politicas,  or  '  The  Idea  of  a 


174      EUROPEAN    LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

Political  Christian  Prince ' ;  Vera  y  Figueroa,  the 
author  of  TJie  Ambassador ;  Suarez  de  Figueroa,  who 
wrote  the  miscellaneous  critical  dialogues  called  El 
Pasagero — '  The  Traveller,' — were  none  of  them  insig- 
nificant men,  but  there  was  a  perpetual  straining  after 
sententious  gravity  in  them,  an  effort  to  look  wiser 
than  life,  an  attempt  to  get  better  bread  than  could 
be  made  out  of  wheat.  They  helped  to  give  Europe 
the  old  idea  of  the  rigid  sententious  Spaniard  which  is 
so  strangely  unlike  the  real  man.  But  it  was  the  time 
of  the  frozen  court  etiquette  of  the  Hapsburg  dynasty, 
and  of  grave  peremptory  manners  in  public,  covering  an 
extraordinary  relaxation  of  morals,  and  an  unabashed 
taste  for  mere  horseplay  in  private.  These  writers 
gave  the  literary  expression  of  the  artificial  Spain  of 
the  seventeenth  century.  It  adds  to  the  piquancy  of 
the  contrast  that  at  a  time  when  Spain  was  marching 
resolutely,  and  with  her  eyes  open,  to  ruin,  by  accumu- 
lating fault  upon  fault,  the  political  writers  named 
here,  and  others,  abounded  in  good  sense.  To  take 
a  single  example.  Among  the  emblems  of  Saavedra- 
Fajardo  is  one  representing  a  globe  supported  between 
the  sterns  of  two  warships,  with  the  motto  "His 
Polis."  In  the  Essay  the  Spanish  diplomatist  sets  out 
the  whole  doctrine,  so  familiar  in  our  own  days  as  that 
of  "sea -power,"  with  great  force.  Yet  this  was 
written,  a  melancholy  example  of  useless  wisdom, 
when  his  country  was  destroying  its  last  chance  of 
maintaining  a  navy,  by  bleeding  itself  nearly  to  death 
in  the  wars  of  Germany  for  the  purpose  of  vindicating 
the  claims  of  the  house  of  Hapsburg. 


SPAIN — MISCELLANEOUS   WRITERS.  175 

Here  may  be  mentioned,  a  little  out  of  his  date, 
but  hardly  out  of  his  place,  for  it  is  difficult  to  say 
where  he  ought  to  be  classed,  the  Viage  Entretenido, 
or  '  Amusing  Voyage,'  of  Agustin  de  Eoxas  or  Rojas. 
He  was  a  very  busy  miscellaneous  writer,  who  led  a 
strange  roaming  life  as  a  soldier,  strolling  actor,  and 
in  some  sense  picaro.  The  Viage  Entretenido  is  the 
only  part  of  his  work  which  survives.  It  is  a  rather 
incoherent  autobiography,  swollen  out  by  specimens 
of  the  has  he  wrote  for  his  fellow-actors.  The  his- 
torical value  of  the  book  is  considerable,  for  Eoxas 
gives  a  very  full  account  of  the  theatrical  life  of  his 
time,  and  is  the  standard  authority  for  the  early 
history  of  the  Spanish  stage.  The  literary  merits  of 
the  book  are  not  small,  for,  consciously  or  uncon- 
consciously,  he  takes,  and  keeps,  the  tone  of  the  true 
artistic  Bohemian,  the  wandering  enfant  sans  souci  to 
whom  the  hardships  of  his  life,  long  tramping  journeys, 
hunger,  poverty,  rags,  and  spasms  of  furious  hard 
work  are  endurable  because  they  give  him  intervals 
of  reckless  idleness,  and  save  him  from  what  he 
especially  hates,  which  is  orderly  industry.  The 
Viage  Entretenido  was  the  model  of  Scarron's  Voyage 
Comiaue.  It  appeared  perhaps  in  1603,  but  certainly 
very  early  in  the  seventeenth  century.1 

A  survey  of  Spanish  literature  of  the  great  epoch 
cannot  end  more  appropriately  than  with  the  writers 
who  by  common  consent  are  called  the  Mystics.  The 
term  has  become  established  in  use,  and  there  would 
be  pedantry  in  rejecting  it.     Yet  it  is  far  from  being 

1  El  Viage  Entretenido  de  Agustin  de  Eoxas.     Madrid,  1793. 


176      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

accurately  applied.  What  is,  properly  speaking,  called 
Mysticism  is  not  congenial  to  the  Spaniard, 
and  was  inevitably  odious  to  the  Inquisi- 
tion. A  train  of  religious  thought  which  led  infal- 
libly to  trust  in  the  "  Inner  Light,"  to  the  contempt 
for  dogma,  to  indifference  to  the  hierarchy,  and  to  the 
preference  for  emotional  piety  over  morality  of  con- 
duct, could  not  but  be  suspect  to  a  body  which  existed 
for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  the  authority  of  the 
Church.  One  Spaniard,  Miguel  de  Molinos,  did 
indeed  show  himself  a  true  mystic,  and  was  the 
father  of  the  "  Quietism "  of  the  later  seventeenth 
century.  But  Molinos  lived  in  Italy,  did  not  ad- 
dress his  countrymen,  and  found  his  following  mainly 
in  France.  There  were  a  few  alumbrados,  as  the 
Spaniards  called  them — "Illuminati" — in  Spain,  as 
there  were  a  few  Protestants;  but  they  were  ex- 
ceptions, and  examples  of  mere  personal  eccentricity. 
The  Inquisition  had  the  sincere  support  of  the  nation 
in  stamping  out  both.  When  it  went  too  far  and 
condemned  what  the  Spaniards  did  not  dislike,  as 
when,  for  instance,  the  Guia  de  Pecadores  —  '  The 
Guide  for  Sinners ' — of  Luis  de  Granada  was  put  in 
the  Index,  the  Inquisition  was  forced  to  reverse  its 
decision.  But  it  had  the  approval  of  the  country 
in  its  efforts  to  suppress  teaching  which  had  a  danger- 
ous tendency  to  arrive  at  the  doctrine  that,  when  the 
soul  of  the  believer  is  united  in  ecstatic  devotion  with 
God,  the  sins  of  the  flesh  are  no  sins  at  all.  The 
common-sense  of  the  Spaniard,  which  was  never  more 
conspicuous   than   in   the   greatest    of    his    orthodox 


SPAIN — THE   MYSTICS.  177 

mystics,  Santa  Teresa,  left  him  in  no  doubt  as  to  the 
Spanish  real  meaning  of  such  teaching  as  that.  The 
mysticism.  stern  handling  it  received  from  the  Inquisi- 
tion had  his  sincere  approval.  The  mysticism  of  the 
Spaniards  consisted  wholly  in  a  certain  Platonism  or 
Neo-Platonism,  in  the  doctrine  which  can  be  suffici- 
ently well  learnt  in  Spenser's  Hymne  of  Heavenly 
Love.  This  might  have  lent  itself  to  the  extreme  of 
Quietism  or  Antinomianism,  but  it  was  restrained  by 
the  sense  of  the  necessity  for  active  virtue,  which  was 
strong  in  the  Spaniard,  and  was  the  result  of  the 
Church's  teaching  that  there  is  no  salvation  without 
works. 

It  is  not,  however,  the  doctrine  of  the  mystics,  but 
their  importance,  and  the  literary  quality  of  their 
work,  which  concern  us  here.  As  regards  their  posi- 
tion in  the  country,  and  their  influence  with  all  ranks 
of  Spaniards,  there  can  be  no  question.  It  was  shown 
not  only  by  the  deference  of  the  austere  Philip  II.  to 
Santa  Teresa,  but  by  the  docility  of  his  grandson, 
Philip  IV. — a  very  different  and  a  very  pleasure- 
loving  man — to  Maria  de  Jesus  de  Agreda,  a  woman 
far  inferior  in  intellect  and  force  of  character  to  the 
reformer  of  the  Carmelites.1  To  their  work  we  may 
apply  the  expression,  very  Platonist  and  old,  which 
Diego  de  Estella  uses  of  the  soul  in  his  Very  Devout 
Meditations  on  the  Love  of  God.     "  Da  vida,"  he  says, 

1  For  this  rather  unexpected  side  to  the  character  of  Philip  IV. , 
and  strange  feature  of  the  Spanish  life  of  the  time,  see  Cartas  de  las 
Venerable  Madre  Sor  Maria  de  Agreda  y  del  Senor  Rey  Don  Felipe  IV. 
Don  Francisco  Silvela.     Madrid,  1885. 

M 


178      EUEOPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

and  "  es  la  forma  del  cuerpo  " — "  It  gives  life,  and  is 
the  form  of  the  body." 

"  For  soul  is  form,  and  doth  the  body  make," 

as  the  same  truth  stands  in  Spenser's  hymn.  The 
intense  religious  spirit  of  the  Spaniards  gives  their 
work  life,  and  is  the  form  of  their  body.  All  the 
best  of  this  side,  if  one  ought  not  to  say  this  basis,  of 
their  character  has  gone  into  the  "mystic"  works. 
The  Spaniard  has  not  been  a  great  preacher.  Part 
of  the  explanation  of  this,  on  the  face  of  it,  rather 
surprising  fact,  is  no  doubt  to  be  found  in  saying 
that  if  the  Inquisition  had  listened  to  every  denuncia- 
tion of  a  preacher,  nobody  would  have  been  found  to 
risk  going  into  a  pulpit.  For,  while  denying  that  the 
Holy  Office  was  felt  to  be  oppressive  by  the  majority 
of  Spaniards,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  its  yoke  was 
heavy  on  the  neck  of  individuals — even  of  the  most 
orthodox.  The  persecution  of  Luis  de  Granada,  who 
as  a  Dominican,  and  therefore  as  a  member  of  the 
order  which  controlled  the  Inquisition,  might  have 
been  supposed  to  be  sure  of  the  most  favourable 
treatment,  is  an  example  of  the  vigilance  exercised 
over   all   who    even    approached    religious 

The  influence  of  .  .  T     .        -,       T        '      .  , 

the  inquisition   questions.     Luis  de  Leon  incurred  an  lm- 
on  Spanish  reii-  priSOnment   of    five    years    on   accusations 

gwus  literature.   *  J 

brought  by  envious  rivals  at  Salamanca, 
and  too  favourably  received  by  the  jealousy  of  the 
Dominicans,  who  were  hostile  to  him  as  an  Augus- 
tinian.1     Santa  Teresa  was  sequestered  by  the  Inqui- 

1  For  this  example  of  the  Inquisition  at  work  see  the  papers  of  his 
case  in  vols.  x.  and  xi.  of  the  Documentos  indditos. 


SPAIN — THE   MYSTICS.  179 

sition  at  Seville.     Her  disciple.  Juan  de  la  Cruz,  who 

helped  her  in  the  reform  of  the  Carmelites,  was  im- 
prisoned for  a  year,  and  only  released  by  the  intrepid 
exertions  of  the  saint  and  the  use  of  the  royal  autho- 
rity. It  was  dangerous  to  speak  without  much  thought 
and  care.  So  the  Spaniards,  who  might  have  given 
their  country  what  the  great  Caroline  divines  gave  to 
English  and  Bossuet  to  French  literature,  preferred 
to  confine  themselves  to  writing,  where  they  could 
weigh  every  word  and  subject  their  work  to  the  re- 
vision of  superiors. 

The  bulk  of  the  Spanish  mystic,  religious,  and  ascetic 
writings  is  enormous.  By  far  the  greater  part  of 
them  have  fallen  dead  to  the  Spaniards  themselves. 
They  have  never  been  made  the  subject  of  an  exhaus- 
tive study  by  any  native  scholar.1 

The  great  names  among  the  Spanish  mystics  of 
the  golden  time  of  their  literature  are  those  of  Malon 

Maion  de     de  Chaide,  Juan  de  Avila,  Luis  de  Granada, 

chaide.  j^ujs  de  Leon?  Santa  Teresa,  and  San  Juan 
de  la  Cruz — and  of  these  Santa  Teresa  alone  is  a  liv- 
ing force.  It  is  difficult  to  understand  what  sense  the 
word  mystic  bore  to  the  first  person  who  applied  it 

to  Pedro  Malon  de  Chaide  (?  1530 ?).     He  was 

of  the  Order  of  St  Augustine,  and  was  a  master  of  a 
fine-flowing,  rather .  unctuous  style.  The  wTork  by 
which  he  is  known  in  Spanish  literature  is  The  Treatise 
of  the  Conversion  of  the  Glorious  Mary  Magdalen.     It 

1  My  own  obligation  is  mainly  to  M.  Paul  llousselot's  Mystiques 
Expagnols,  Paris,  1867,  which  the  Spaniards  have  found  it  easier  to 
call  insufficient  than  to  displace. 


180      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

was  written  for  a  young  lady  who  had  resolved  to  take 
the  vows,  but  was  not  published  till  many  years  later. 
Malon  de  Chaide  was  one  of  those  who  denounced  the 
evil  influence  of  the  books  of  chivalry ;  but  his  own 
style  is  very  often — at  least  to  our  modern  taste — more 
lit  for  a  romance  than  a  book  of  devotion.  He  wrote 
verse — and  well.  It  must  be  read  with  a  constant 
recollection  that  it  was  not  written  for  us,  but  in  a 
time  when  the  application  of  the  language  of  The  Song 
of  Solomon  to  devotion  was  justified  by  the  all  but 
universal  belief  in  the  allegorical  character  of  the 
poem.  In  this  practice,  of  which  we  have  well-known 
examples  of  our  own,  Malon  de  Chaide  never  went 
to  the  extreme  reached  by  Juan  de  la  Cruz.  The  ven- 
erable master  Juan  de  Avila  (1502-1569), 

Juan  de  Avila. 

known  as  the  Apostle  ol  Andalucia,  an  older 
man  than  Malon  de  Chaide,  was  also  much  less  the 
fashionable  divine.  The  most  famous  of  his  many 
works  is  The  Spiritual  Treatise  on  the  verse  Audi,filia 
— "  Hearken,  0  daughter,  and  consider,"  &c.  It  was  at 
first  only  a  letter  of  advice  written  for  a  lady,  Sancha 
Carrillo,  who  had  resolved  to  take  the  vows,  but  Avila 
added  to  it  largely,  and  in  its  final  form  it  is  a  com- 
plete guide  for  those  who  wish  to  lead  the  religious 
life,  whether  in  a  monastery  or  in  the  century.  It  is 
not,  perhaps,  a  book  to  be  recommended  to  those  who 
cannot  read  with  the  eyes  of  a  Spanish  Eoman 
Catholic,  or  at  least  with  as  much  critical  faculty  as 
will  enable  them  to  understand,  and  to  allow  for,  that 
point  of  view.  The  style  of  Juan  de  Avila,  though 
verbose    in    the    weaker    passages,    has    an    ardent 


Luis  de 
Granada. 


SPAIN — THE   MYSTICS.  181 

eloquence  at  times,  and  has  always  a  large  share  of 
the  religious  quality  of  unction.  _ 

[Luis  de  (fomnHfli  n  504-158^  and  (Luis  de  Leon 
(1527-1601)  were  contemporaries,  younger  men  than 
Juan  de  Avila,  and  to  some  extent  his 
fnllowpT-g.  The  Guide  for  Sinners  of  the 
first,  and  the  Perfecta  Casacla  of  the  second,  have 
remained  more  or  less  popular  hooks  of  devotion.  At 
least  they  are  reprinted  among  the  Spaniards.  The 
Guide  for  Sinners  was  translated  and  read  all  over 
Europe.  Granada's  Booh  of  Prayer  and  Meditation 
on  "  the  principal  mysteries  of  our  faith "  was  hardly 
less  famous.  He  had  both  the  qualities  and  the  de- 
fects of  the  style  of  his  master.  Luis  de  Leon  was 
probably  the  greatest  of  the  mystics  in  intrinsic  force 
of  intellect  and  in  learning,  besides  being  master  of  a 
far  more  manly  style  than  any  of  them.  He  was  also 
a  man  of  independent  intrepid  character,  and  it  may 
be  that  the  fear  with  which  the  Inquisition  regarded 
him  was  largely  inspired  by  his  strictures  on  the 
ignorance  of  the  clergy  and  their  flocks.  Inquiry 
and  knowledge  were  dreaded  at  a  time  when  the 
Protestants  were  using  them  as  instruments  against 
the  Church.  The  Perfecta  Casada  was  written  for  a 
lady,  Doha  Maria  Varela  Osorio.     These  writers,  it 

t  .  a  r       will  be  seen,  worked  much  for  women.     It 

Luis  de  Leon. 

was  the  age  of  the  directors  as  distinguished 
from  the  old  confessors.  Pious  people,  and  more  especi- 
ally women,  who  wished  to  lead  a  religious  life,  and 
had  been  taught  that  it  was  necessary  not  only  to  do 
but  to  believe  what  was  right,  were  anxious  for  the 


182      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER    RENAISSANCE. 

constant  guidance  of  a  teacher  who  must  be  .  both 
orthodox  and  learned.  Santa  Teresa  insisted  greatly 
on  this.  The  treatise  is  a  long  comment  on  the  passage 
of  Scripture  which  will  suggest  itself  to  everybody  as 
fit  fur  the  purpose — the  last  chapter  of  Proverbs,  be- 
ginning at  the  tenth  verse.  But  the  allegorical  mean- 
ing  is  more  insisted  on  than  the  plain  sense  of  the 
words,  and  the  Pcrfecta  Casada  is  a  treatise  on  doc- 
trine. Luis  de  Leon  wrote  much  else,  including  an 
exposition  of  the  Names  of  Christ  and  of  The  Booh 
of  Job. 

The  greatest  name  among  the  Spanish  mystics,  and 
one  of  the  greatest  in  all  religious  history,  is  that  of 
Teresa  de  Zepeda  y  Ahumada,  who  called  herself  "  in 
religion "  Teresa  de  Jesus.  She  was  born  of  a  noble 
family  of  Avila  in  Old  Castile  in  1515,  and  died  in 
1582.     "We  are  not  directly  concerned  here 


with  her  religious  life,  her  reform  of  the 
Carmelites,  or  her  doctrine,  which  indeed  was  not 
original.  The  inspiring  motive  of  Santa  Teresa  was 
her  desire  to  save  the  souls  of  the  Lutheran  heretics, 
not  by  preaching  to  them,  but  by  so  reforming  her 
own  order,  the  Carmelites,  that  they  should  return  to 
their  original  purity,  and  prove  an  effective  instrument 
for  the  Church.  Her  literary  work  may  be  divided 
into  two  parts.  One  contains  the  different  treatises 
she  wrote  by  the  order  of  her  superiors,  who  probably 
began  by  wishing  to  test  her  orthodoxy,  and  who  ended 
by  revering  her  as  one  inspired.  Then  there  are  her 
many  letters,  written  to  all  ranks  of  her  contempor- 
aries, from  the  king  down  to  the  nuns  of  her  houses. 


SPAIN — THE   MYSTICS.  183 

In  both  Santa  Teresa  wrote  the  same  Castilian — the 
language  as  it  was  spoken  by  the  nobles,  not  learned, 
indeed,  but  not  wholly  uneducated,  who  belonged  to 
"  the  kidney  of  Castile,"  and  had  not  been  affected  by 
the  Italianate  style  of  the  Court.  ^Hgr  own  great 
character  is  stamped  on  every  line.  Nobody  ever 
showed  less  of  the  merely  emotional  saintly  character, 
rr3Ieandering  about,  capricious,  melodious,  weak,  at  the 
will  of  devout  whim  mainly  !  *  Her  letters,  which  are 
not  only  the  most  attractive  part  of  her  writing  but 
even  the  most  valuable,  show  her  not  only  as  a  great 
saint  but  as  a  great  lady,  with  a  very  acute  mind,  a 
fine  wit,  and  an  abounding  good  sense. 

Santa  Teresa's  disciple  and  colleague  in  the  reform 
of  the  Carmelites,  0uan  de  la  Cruz/whose  family  name 
jnan  de  la     was  Yepes  (1542=1591)',  not  unjustly  named 
cruz.  the   Ecstatic  Doctor,  was  emphatically  a 

saint  of  the  "  melodious  "  order.  His  emotional — not 
to  say  gushing — style  has  been,  and  is,  much  admired 
by  the  Spaniards.  To  us  it  seems  that  nobody  stands 
in  greater  need  of  being  judged  by  the  widest  inter- 
pretation of  the  text,  "  To  the  pure  all  things  are  pure." 
There  is  an  amatory  warmth  of  language,  an  applica- 
tion to  religion  of  erotic  images  in  Juan  de  la  Cruz, 
which,  considered  in  itself,  and  apart  from  what  justi- 
fied it  at  the  time,  is  nauseous.  A  quite  sufficient 
example  will  be  found  in  the  much-quoted  verses  in 
his  Ascent  of  Mount  Garmel,  which  begin,  "  En  una 
noche  escura."  Yet  Juan  de'la  Cruz  wrote  eloquently 
in  his  emotional  way,  and  his  verse  is  beautiful. 

These  are  but  a  very  few  names  from  among  the 


184      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

Spanish   mystic,   moral,  and   ascetic   writers,  but   it 
a    would  only  be  a  very  full  history  of  Spanish 

Decadence  of  t  Jm  J  *      .        r 

the  Mystic  religious  literature  which  would  deal  with 
Jeronimo  Gracian  (not  to  be  confounded 
with  Baltasar),  with  Juan  de  Jesus  Maria,  or  Eusebio 
Nieremberg.  As  the  seventeenth  century  drew  on 
there  was  continually  less  thought  in  Spanish  religious 
literature  and  more  emotion,  while  that  emotion  had 
an  increasing  tendency  to  abound  in  the  amatory 
images  of  Juan  de  la  Cruz.1 

1  All  the  writers  mentioned  here  will  be  found  in  the  Tesoro  dt 
Escritores  Misticos  Espafioles  of  Ochoa.     Paris,  n.d. 


185 


CHAPTER   VII. 

ELIZABETHAN    POETRY. 

the  starting-point — italian  influence — the  opposition  to  rhyme 
— excuses  for  this — its  little  effect — poetry  of  first  half 
of  Elizabeth's  reign — spenser — order  of  his  work— his  metre 
— character  of  his  poetry — sir  p.  sidney — the  '  apologie  for 
poetrie' — his  sonnets  and  lyrics — watson — the  sonneteers — 
other  lyric  poetry  —  the  collections  and  song-books — the 
historical  poems  —  fitz -geoffrey  and  markham  —  warner  — 
daniel — drayton — the  satiric  poets — lodge — hall — marston 

— DONNE. 

A  long  silence  and  two  generations  of  effort  preceded 
the  renaissance  of  English  poetry,  which  may  con- 
veniently, though  perhaps  somewhat  arbitrarily,  be 
said  to  date  from  the  publication  of  the  Shepherd's 
Calendar  in  1579.  The  choice  of  this  year  as  the 
The  starting-  actual  starting-point  is  arbitrary,  because 
point.  Spenser    was    already   recognised    by   his 

friends  as  the  "  new  poet,"  and  his  work  was  known 
among  them  in  manuscript.  It  had  therefore  begun 
to  live,  and  to  exercise  an  influence,  before  it  was  given 
to  the  world.  But  the  convention  which  treats  the 
ascertainable  date  of  printing,  and  not  the  first  moment 


186      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

when  the  poet's  mind  began  to  create,  as  the  starting- 
point,  is  useful,  and  we  may  (always  remembering  that 
it  is  a  convention)  put  1579  at  the  head  of  the  history 
of  the  great  Elizabethan  poetry. 

With  us,  as  with  the  Spaniard,  the  spark,  which  was 
to  grow  into  so  great  a  flame,  was  brought  from  Italy. 
Before  Spenser  there  had  been  Surrey  and  Wyatt,  who 
had  worked  in  the  Italian  metres  in  the  reign  of 
Henry  VIIL,  and  their  example  had  been  set  up  for 
all  to  follow  by  the  publication  of  TotteVs  Miscellany 
in  1557.  There  had  also  been  the  leaders  of  the  New 
Learning,  and  the  classic  models.  But  the  resemblance 
Italian  between  the  history  of  poetry  in  the  two 
influence,  countries  goes  no  further.  Italy  could 
affect  only  individual  Englishmen.  No  such  similarity 
of  language,  beliefs,  and  character  existed  between  the 
two  countries  as  would  have  enabled  Italy  to  press 
on  us  as  it  did  on  Spain,  all  along  the  line.  There 
was  not  the  same  proximity,  nor  had  there  been  an 
equally  close  previous  relationship  of  pupil  to  master 
stretching  far  back  into  the  Middle  Ages.  The  Italian 
influence  in  England  was  rather  an  incitement  to  in- 
dependent effort  than  a  mere  pattern  to  be  copied,  as 
it  was  to  the  Spaniard.  Nor  were  the  Greek  and 
Latin  models  more,  though  in  this  case  a  deliberate 
effort  was  made  to  bring  English  verse  into  subjec- 
tion to  ancient  prosody.  Much  ridicule  was  shed 
then,  and  has  been  poured  since,  on  those  who  en- 
deavoured to  write  English  verse  by  quantity  only. 
The  quaint  pragmatic  figure  of  Spenser's  friend  Gabriel 
Harvey,  who  was  the  most  conspicuous,  though  not 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  187 

the  first  of  the  school,  was  of  itself  enough  to  confer 
me  opposition  a  certain  absurdity  on  the  effort.  And  the 
to  rhyme.  verse  produced  in  this  struggle  to  do  the 

impossible  was  altogether  worthy  of  Harvey's  oddities. 
Putting  aside  Stanyhurst's  JEneid,  published  in  1582, 
which  is  the  most  bulky  example  of  misapplied  labour, 
it  ought,  one  would  think,  to  have  been  warning 
enough  to  those  who  thought  to  force  English  into 
an  alien  mould  when  they  found  a  writer  of  the  real 
intelligence  and  natural  good  taste  of  Webbe,  author 
of  TJie  Discourse  of  English  Poetrie,  contentedly  pro- 
nouncing such  a  line  as  this: — 

"Hedgerows   hott   doo    resound   with    grasshops    mournfully 
squeeking. 

Webbe  did  worse,  for  he  seems  really  to  have  be- 
lieved that  he  improved  Spenser,  whom  he  admired 
and  recognised  as  the  new  poet,  when  he  turned  the 
song  in  The  Shepherd's  Calendar  beginning — 

"  Ye  dainty  Nymphes  that  in  this  blessed  brooke 
doo  bathe  your  brest," 

into  this : — 

"  O  ye  Nymphes  most  fine  who  resort  to  this  brooke 
For  to  bathe  your  pretty  breasts  at  all  times, 
Leave  the  watrish  bowers  hyther  and  to  me  come 
At  my  request  now." 

Yet  the  mistake  of  Webbe  was  one  which  Spenser 

himself,   and    Sidney,   had    so  far  shared    that   they 

Excuses/or      played  with  the  classic  metres.     Nor  was 

this-  it  altogether  absurd,  but,  on  the  contrary, 

natural,  and  even   inevitable.     When  there  were  no 


188      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

native  models  newer  than  Chaucer  to  follow,  and 
when  the  splendour  of  classic  literature  was  just  being 
fully  recognised,  it  was  not  wonderful  that  men  who 
were  in  search  of  a  poetic  form  should  have  been 
deluded  into  thinking  that  they  could  reproduce  what 
they  admired,  or  should  have  agreed  with  Ascham  that 
"to  follow  rather  the  Goths  in  rhyming,  than  the 
Greeks  in  true  versifying,  were  even  to  eat  acorns 
with  swine,  when  we  may  freely  eat  bread  among 
men." 

Then  this  mania,  pedantry,  or  whatever  other  evil 

name  may  be  given  it,  never  attained  to  the  dignity  of 

doing;  harm.     No   Englishman   who   could 

Its  little  effect.  ° 

write  good  rhyme  was  ever  deterred  from 
doing  so  by  the  fear  that  he  would  become  a  Goth, 
and  eat  acorns  with  swine.  The  real  belief  of  the 
Elizabethan  poets  was  expressed  in  The  Arte  of  English 
Poesie,  which  tradition  has  assigned  to  George  Putten- 
ham.  If  we  have  not  the  feet  of  the  Greeks  and 
Latins,  which  we  "  as  yet  never  went  about  to  frame 
(the  nature  of  our  language  and  wordes  not  permitting 
it),  we  have  instead  thereof  twentie  other  curious 
points  in  that  skill  more  than  they  ever  had,  by 
reason  of  our  rime,  and  tunable  concords,  or  sim- 
phonie,  which  they  never  observed.  Poesie  therefore 
may  be  an  arte  in  our  vulgar,  and  that  very  methodi- 
call  and  commendable."  The  Arte  of  English  Poesie 
was  published  in  1589.  Webbe's  discourse  had  ap- 
peared three  years  before.  The  conflict,  such  as  it 
was,  was  really  over,  though  the  superiority  of  "  versi- 
fying "  to  rhyming  might  continue  to  bo  discussed  as 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  189 

an  academic  question.  Thomas  Campion,  who,  as  if 
to  show  the  hollowness  of  his  own  cause,  was  a  writer 
of  rhymed  songs  of  great  beauty,  might  talk  "  of  the 
childish  titilation  of  riming "  in  his  Art  of  English 
Poetry  in  1602,  and  be  answered  by  Daniel  in  his 
Defence  of  Byrne,  but  they  were  discussing  "  a  question 
of  the  schools."  The  attempt  to  turn  English  poetry 
from  its  natural  course  belongs  to  the  curiosities  of 
literary  history. 

Poetry  so  completely  dominated  the  literature  of 

Elizabeth's   reign   that   we    can   leave    not   only    the 

prose,  which  was  entirely  subordinate,  but 

half  of  Eiiza-     the  drama,  poetic  as  it  was,  aside  for  the 

beth's  reign.  ^^       There  Wftg    nQ    great    drama    fem    ^ 

poets  had  suppled  and  moulded  the  language.  The 
example  set  by  Surrey  and  Wyatt  had  no  such  imme- 
diate influence  as  had  been  exercised  by  Boscan  and 
Garcilaso  in  Spain.  Part  even  of  their  own  work 
hardly  rose  above  the  level  of  the  doggerel  to  which 
English  verse  had  fallen.  Those  who  look  for  an 
explanation  of  the  flowering  or  the  barrenness  of 
literature  elsewhere  than  in  the  presence  or  absence 
of  genius  in  a  people,  may  account  for  this  by  the 
troubled  times  which  followed  the  death  of  Henry 
VIII.  But  the  return  of  peace  and  security  with 
the  accession  of  Elizabeth  brought  no  change.  The 
first  twenty  years  of  her  reign  were  as  barren  as  the 
disturbed  years  of  Edward  or  Mary.  Indeed  they 
were  even  poorer,  for  Sackville's  Induction  to  The 
Mirror  of  Magistrates  and  his  Complaint  of  Bucking- 
ham, which  have  been  recognised  as  the  best  verse 


190      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

written  in  England  between  Chaucer  and  Spenser, 
though  not  published  till  Elizabeth  was  on  the  throne, 
had  been  written  before  1559 — in  the  reign  of  Mary. 
Between  this  year  and  the  publication  of  The  Shep- 
herd's Calendar  (1579)  the  voice  of  poetry  was  not 
mute  in  England — at  least  not  the  voice  of  those  who 
were  endeavouring  to  write  poetry.  When  Webbe 
spoke,  with  more  emphasis  than  respect,  of  the 
"  infinite  fardles  of  printed  pamphlets,"  mostly  "  either 
meere  poeticall  or  which  tend  in  some  respects  (as 
either  in  matter  or  forme)  to  poetry,"  by  which  "  this 
country  is  pestered,  all  shoppes  stuffed,  and  every 
study  furnished,"  he  was  not  wholly  exaggerating. 
Translators  were  very  busy,  and  not  a  few  published 
original  work.  There  were  certainly  many  others 
who  wrote  but  did  not  publish.  But  these  fore- 
runners could  in  no  case  have  deserved  more  than 
the  praise  which  Sir  John  Harington  gave  to  one  of 
them,  George  Turberville : — 

"  When  times  were  yet  but  rude  thy  pen  endeavoured 
To  polish  barbarism  with  purer  style." 

Their  inferiority  to  Surrey,  Wyatt,  and  Sackville 
diminishes  their  claim  even  to  so  much  as  this. 

They  were  enslaved  to  the  old  fourteen-syllabled 
metre,  which  might  or  might  not  be  printed  in  lines  of 
eight  and  six,  but  which,  in  whatever  way  it  was 
arranged,  had  a  fatal  tendency  to  fall  into  a  rocking- 
horse  movement.  We  constantly  meet  with  rhymes 
like  these : — 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  191 

"  The  hawtye  verse  that  Maro  wrote 

made  Rome  to  wonder  muche, 
And  mervayle  none  for  why  the  style 

and  weightynes  was  such, 
That  all  men  judged  Parnassus  Mownt 

had  clefte  herselfe  in  twayne, 
And  brought  forth  one  that  seemed  to  drop 

from  out  Minervaes  brayne." 

These  verses,  which  are  from  Barnabe  Googe's  Epitaph 
on  Thomas  Phayre,  are  not  bad  examples  of  a  kind 
of  metre  which  seems  to  come  naturally  to  English- 
men, but  their  capacity  for  turning  to  doggerel  is 
patent.  They,  with  here  and  there  a  note  which  shows 
that  if  the  writer  had  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  young 
after,  and  not  before,  The  Shepherd's  Calendar,  he 
might  have  contributed  to  the  great  body  of  exquisite 
Elizabethan  songs,  make  the  staple  of  the  verse  of  the 
first  half  of  the  reign.  These  men  are  entitled  to  their 
own  honour.  They  rough  -  harrowed  the  ground. 
George  Turberville,  who  was  born  about  1530  and  died 
about  1594;  George  Gascoigne,  whose  dates  are  1535 
or  thereabouts  to  1577 ;  and  Barnabe  Googe,  born  in 
1540,  who  died  in  1594,  tried  many  things  ;  and  if  they 
did  nothing  else,  they  helped  to  extend  the  knowledge 
of  the  average  Englishman,  and  to  give  practice  to  the 
language  by  their  translations.  The  strongest  of  the 
three  was  Gascoigne,  who,  in  addition  to  his  attempt  to 
write  a  verse  satire — The  Steel  Glass — was  the  author 
of  some  pretty  occasional  poetry,  of  a  translation  of 
Ariosto's  Gli  Snppositi,  stories  from  Bandello,  and  a 
tragedy  of  Euripides,  and  who  may  be  said  to  have 
begun  the  writing  of  critical  essays  in  English  by  his 


192      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

brief  note  of  Instruction  for  the  construction  of  English 
verse,  published  as  a  preface  to  The  Steel  Glass.1 

The  sincerity  with  which  the  best  intellects  in  Eng- 
land were  studying  poetry,  and  looking  for  a  poet, 
helps  to  explain  the  instant  recognition  of  Spenser. 
At  this  moment  the  times  called  for  the  man,  and  he 
came.  Edmund  Spenser  was  born  in  London,  probably 
in  1552,  of  a  Lancashire  branch  of  a  very  ancient  and 
famous  house.  His  family  was  poor,  and  he  received 
his  education  at  Pembroke  Hall,  Cambridge,  as  a  sizar. 
He  remained  at  Cambridge  from  1569  to  1573,  and  it 
is  believed  that  he  then  spent  some  time  in  the  north 
of  England  with  his  family  before  coming  to  London 
to  seek  his  fortune.     It  could  be  obtained 

Spenser.         .  . 

m  one  way  only — by  the  favour  of  friends 
who  could  secure  him  a  place.  That  Spenser  was  re- 
solved to  make  poetry  the  chief  aim  of  his  life  is 
certain ;  but  he  could  not  live  by  it  at  a  time  when 
no  form  of  literature,  with  the  exception  of  the  drama, 
brought  certain  payment,  and  even  the  drama  gaVe  but 
starvation  wages.  He  had  to  rely  on  the  willingness 
of  powerful  patrons  to  see  him  provided  for  because  he 
was  a  poet.  Spenser  was  not  without  friends  who 
might  have  been  useful.  At  Cambridge  he  had  be- 
come known  to  Gabriel  Harvey,  who,  as  the  older  man, 
a  good  scholar,  and  perhaps  also  as  a  person  of  prag- 

1  TotteUs  Miscellany  has  been  reprinted  by  Mr  Arber,  who  has  also 
republished  Gascoigne's  Steel  Glass,  and  the  Ecloyucs,  Epitaphs,  and 
Sonnets  of  Barnabe  Googe  in  his  English  reprints.  Turberville  is  in 
vol.  ii.  of  Chalmers's  British  Poets.  Works  of  Thomas  Sackville,  Lord 
Buckhurst,  1859. 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  193 

matical  self-confidence  and  indomitable  pertinacity, 
exercised  a  certain  limited  influence  over  him. 
Harvey  introduced  Spenser  to  Leicester  and  Leicester's 
kinsman,  Sir  Philip  Sidney.  His  undoubted  Puritan- 
ism was,  it  may  be,  in  part  learnt  from  the  equally 
undoubted  though  very  different  Puritanism  of  the 
queen's  favourite.  But  Leicester  did,  and  it  may  be 
could  do,  little  for  his  client.  The  Shepherd's  Calendar 
was  published  in  1579,  a  year  or  two  after  Spenser 
came  to  London,  but  he  had  no  share  in  "  the  rich  fee 
which  poets  won't  divide."  There  is  no  need  to  look 
far  for  the  causes  of  his  disappointment.  Elizabeth  had 
little  money,  and  much  to  do  with  it,  while  her  Lord 
Treasurer,  Burghley,  who  had  no  love  for  Leicester,  was 
the  man  to  meet  any  pensioned  poet  with  the  un- 
gracious attitude  of  Sully  to  Casaubon :  "  You  are  no 
use,  sir,  and  you  cost  the  king  as  much  as  two 
captains."  In  1580  Spenser  accompanied  Lord  Grey 
to  Ireland,  where  estates  of  confiscated  land  were  to 
be  won.  From  that  time  he  was  plunged  into  the 
horrible  strife  between  the  anarchy  of  Celtic  Ireland 
and  the  repression  of  the  queen's  officers,  who  fought 
for  order  with  ferocious  means.  He  obtained  a  grant 
of  land  in  County  Cork,  married  in  1594,  and  reached 
some  measure  of  prosperity.  A  small  but  apparently 
ill-paid  pension  was  granted  him.  The  rebellion  of 
1598  shattered  his  fortunes  altogether.  His  house  at 
Kilcolman  was  burnt  in  the  usual  fashion  of  the  brutal 
Irish  wars,  and  it  was  said  that  one  of  his  children 
perished  with  it.  Spenser  fled  to  England,  and  died 
on   the    16th   January   1599 — "for  lack   of   bread," 

N 


194      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

according  to  Ben  Jonson,  and  undoubtedly  in  great 
poverty. 

It  seems  certain  that  he  began  writing  very  young, 
for  some  translations  from  Petrarch  and  Joachim  du 
Bellay,  which  were  afterwards  reprinted  unchanged,  or 
changed  only  by  rhyme,  in  his  acknowledged  works, 
appeared  in  The  Theatre  of  Voluptuous  Worldlings 
of  John  Van  Noodt  in  1569.  Ten  years,  however, 
passed  before  he  published  The  Shepherd's  Calendar, 
Order  of  and  then  an  equal  period  before  he  pre- 
Mswork.  pared  to  bring  out  the  first  three  books 
of  The  Faerie  Queen,  which  was  registered  at  Sta- 
tioners' Hall  on  the  last  day  of  1589,  and  appeared 
in  the  following  spring.  Next  year — 1591  —  ap.- 
peared  the  minor  poems,  under  the  name  of  The 
Complaints  (The  Ruins  of  Time,  The  Tears  of  the 
Muses,  Virgil's  Gnat,  Mother  Hubberds  Tale,  The  Ruins 
of  Rome,  Muiopotmos,  and  The  Visions).  The  address 
to  the  reader  gives  a  promise  of  other  poems,  which 
have  been  lost;  and  it  may  be  noted  that  the  same 
thing  had  happened  with  The  Shepherd's  Calendar. 
The  Daphnaida  followed.  In  1596  the  Amoretti, 
the  Epithalamium,  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again, 
the  fourth,  fifth,  and  sixth  books  of  The  Faerie  Queen, 
the  Hymns,  and  the  Rrothalamium  were  published 
within  a  short  time  of  one  another.  Nothing  more 
was  to  appear  in  his  life.  Part  of  a  seventh  book 
of  The  Faerie  Queen,  and  a  prose  treatise  giving  a 
very  vivid,  very  true,  and  very  terrible  "  View  of  the 
Present  State  of  Ireland,"  were  printed  after  his 
death.      The    treatise    did   not  come   out    for  thirty 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  195 

years,  when  it  was  published  by  Sir  J.  Ware.  The 
Fragments  were  included  in  the  new  edition  of  The 
Faerie  Queen  in  1611. 

Few  great  poets  were  ever  so  little  beholden  to 
predecessors  as  Spenser.  He  had  before  him  Chaucer, 
and  near  his  own  time  Sackville,  who  had  written 
with  original  force  in  Chaucer's  stanza.  There  were 
also  the  Italians,  whom  he  knew  well,  their  few 
English  followers,  and  the  French  poets  of  the  Pleiade. 
In  his  Shepherd's  Calendar  Spenser  imitated  the 
Italian  copies  of  the  classic  Eclogues,  and  he  trans- 
lated from  the  French.  Neither  he  nor  any  man 
could  live  uninfluenced  by  his  time.  The  notes  of  the 
Eenaissance  are  abundantly  audible  in  his  work — its 
love  of  beauty,  its  desire  for  joy,  and  the  melancholy 
which  was  natural  in  men  whose  ideals  were  un- 
attainable in  a  very  harsh  world,  which  was  never 
harder  than  amid  the  disruption  of  faith,  the  violent 
clash  of  contending  forces,  and  the  unchaining  of 
violent  passions,  of  the  sixteenth  century.     But  there 

might  have  been  all  this,  and  no  Spenser. 

He  is  great  by  what  was  wholly  his  own, 
both  in  form  and  spirit.  The  Shepherd's  Calendar 
may  be  called  the  work  of  his  prentice  hand,  done 
when  he  had  not  attained  complete  control  of  his 
own  vast  powers.  Yet  it  is  not  so  far  below  the  im- 
peccable verse  of  his  later  years  as  it  is  above  the 
level  of  his  immediate  predecessors  in  Elizabeth's 
reign.  The  part  of  imitation  which  there  is  in  it 
is  the  weakest.  What  he  inherited  from  nobody  was 
the  new  melody  he  imparted  to  English  poetry.     It 


196      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

is  out  of  his  own  genius  that  he  perfected  the  form 
in  which  that  melody  found  its  full  expression.  The 
Spenserian  stanza  does  not  appear  in  The  JSJiepherd's 
Calendar  ;  but  it  had  been  constructed,  and  was  being 
used  in  the  earlier  cantos  of  The  Faerie  Queen  at  least 
immediately  after  the  earlier  work  was  finished.  It 
is  surely  no  longer  necessary  to  argue  that  this  form 
was  not  imitated  from  the  Italians.  The  ottava  rima 
and  the  sonnet  may  have — indeed  must  have — helped 
Spenser  with  indications,  but  they  did  no  more.  Had 
he  been  an  imitator  he  would  have  done  as  the 
Spaniards  did, — he  would  have  taken  an  already 
finished  form,  and  would  have  adhered  to  it  slavishly. 
But  he  did  a  very  different  thing.  He  constructed  .a 
stanza  which  is  to  English  what  the  ottava  rima  is 
to  the  Italian.  It  is  just  the  difference  between  a 
successor  and  a  mere  follower,  that  whereas  the 
second  toils  to  reproduce  the  letter,  the  first  gives  a 
new  form  to  the  spirit.  The  relation  in  which  Spenser 
stands  to  the  Italians  is  that  he  carried  on  the  torch 
of  great  poetry,  but  he  lit  it  of  English  wood,  and 
bore  it  to  a  measure  of  his  own.  His  sonnet  is  hardly 
less  independent  than  his  stanza,  and  all  talk  of  obli- 
gation to  any  model  becomes  idle  indeed  when  we 
think  of  the  melody  of  the  Hymns,  the  Epithalamium, 
and  the  Prothalamium. 

The  matter  which  this  form  bodied   forth   to   the 

world  is  not  to  be  expressed   in   our   meagre   prose. 

The  character  It  could  be  uttered  only  in  his  own  perfect 

of  his  poetry.    verset     The  mere  doctrine  may  be  defined 

with  no  overwhelming  amount  of  difficulty,  for  there 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  197 

is  a  strong  and,  not  only  unconcealed  but,  firmly 
avowed  didactic  aim  in  Spenser.  It  was  no  purpose 
of  his  to  be  "  the  idle  singer  of  an  empty  day."  He 
held  with  his  friend  Sir  Philip  Sidney  that  the  poet 
"  doth  intend  the  winning  of  the  mind  from  wicked- 
ness to  virtue."  The  poet  in  their  creed  was  the  seer, 
and  Spenser  strove  to  fulfil  his  lofty  function  by 
teaching  the  Platonism  which  endeavours  to  trace 
back  the  love  of  virtue  and  the  love  of  beauty  to  that 
divine  origin  where  they  are  one,  and  by  singing  a 
Puritanism  which  is  the  poetic  expression  of  the  Eng- 
lishman's innate  conviction  that  the  religion  which  is 
not  interpreted  into  conduct  is  an  empty  hypocrisy. 
But  all  this  didactic  side  of  Spenser  is  the  side  which 
was  not  necessarily  poetic.  In  so  far  as  the  Hymns 
merely  teach  a  Platonist  doctrine,  they  do  not  surpass 
the  final  pages  of  Castiglione's  Courtier.  In  so  far  as 
The  Faerie  Queen  is  an  allegory,  it  is  no  more  consist- 
ent, ingenious,  or  perfectly  adapted  to  its  purpose 
than  The  Pilgrim's  Progress.  But  over  all  that  could 
be  adequately  expressed  in  prose  Spenser  cast  a  spell 
which  carried  it  into  the  realm  of  fancy — that  golden 
world  of  the  poet  which  Sir  Philip  Sidney  contrasted 
with  nature's  "  brazen "  earth.  A  very  trifling  change 
in  the  wording  of  one  passage  of  The  Apologie  for 
Poetrie  is  all  that  is  needed  to  make  it  applicable  to 
The  Faerie  Queen :  "  Nature  never  set  forth  the  earth  in 
so  rich  tapistry  as  '  this  poet  hath '  done,  neither  with 
pleasant  rivers,  fruitful  trees,  sweet-smelling  flowers; 
nor  whatsoever  else  may  make  the  too  much  loved 
earth   more   lovely."      It   is   to   this   word   that    the 


198      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — 1ATER   RENAISSANCE. 

attempt  to  estimate  Spenser  finally  leads.  By  the 
magic  of  his  melody,  and  the  force  of  that  imagination 
which  could  transmute  all  from  prose  to  poetry,  he 
made  a  lovely  world  of  poetry  out  of  the  real  earth. 
When  he  used  ugliness,  as  he  could,  it  was  for  the 
purpose  of  heightening  beauty  by  contrast. 

As  the  poet  of  The  Faerie  Queen,  Spenser  stands 
apart  in  his  time.  He  is  connected  with  his  con- 
temporaries by  the  sonnet.  This  form,  introduced 
into  English  literature  by  Surrey  and  Wyatt,  had 
been  little,  and  ill,  cultivated  in  the  duller  generation 
which  followed  them.  But  with  the  revival  of  the 
poetic  genius  of  England  towards  the  middle  of  the 
queen's  reign,  it  naturally  attracted  men  who  were 
in  search  of  richer  and  more  artful  forms  of  verse. 
Moreover,  it  lent  itself  to  the  expression  of  feeling, 
and  that  was  of  itself  enough  to  make  it  popular  with 
a  lyrical  generation.  For  this  reason  the  sonnet  work 
of  the  Elizabethans  has  been  made  subject  to  a  great 
deal  of  comment  which  is  not  of  the  nature  of  literary 
criticism.  It  has  been  treated  as  a  form  of  confession 
and  veiled  autobiography.  Various  considerations — 
the  limits  of  space  being  not  the  least  important 
among  them — make  it  impossible  to  discuss  the  ques- 
tion at  length  here.  Moreover,  where  the  external 
evidence  is  naught,  and  the  internal  evidence  is  sub- 
ject to  various  interpretations,  which  is  always  the 
case,  comment  on  the  inner  meaning  of  the  sonnets 
must  always  be  more  or  less  guesswork.  To  start 
from  arbitrary  premisses,  with  the  certainty  of  arriv- 
ing at  no  definite  conclusion,  ought  to  be  considered 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  199 

a  waste  of  time.  Sidney  may  have  decided  to  leave 
it  on  record  that  he  found  out  his  love  for  Penelope 
Devereux  too  late,  and  that  he  then  hovered  round 
the  thought  of  adultery.  Shakespeare  may  have  made 
poetry  out  of  his  friendship  and  his  love.  If  so,  the 
passions  which  left  them  so  much  masters  of  them- 
selves as  to  be  able  to  produce  these  artistic  forms 
of  verse  cannot  have  been  very  absorbing.  Finished 
sonnets  do  not  come  to  men  either  in  their  sleep  or 
in  anguish.  What  we  know  for  certain  of  Spenser, 
Sidney,  Shakespeare,  and  others  is,  that  they  lived 
active  lives  in  the  world,  and  that  they  were  artists. 
The  nature  of  the  artist  is  that  he  endeavours  to  give 
form  to  the  passion  or  action  which  he  can  conceive,  in 
the  terms  of  his  art,  whether  he  be  poet,  painter,  or 
actor.  It  is  because  he  has  the  constructive  imagina- 
tion and  the  power  of  expression  that  he  gives  truth 
to  his  work.  The  genius  which  could  give  reality 
to  the  sorrow  of  Constance,  to  the  manhood  of  the 
Bastard,  to  the  jealousy  of  Othello,  to  more  men, 
women,  and  passions  than  could  be  named  on  this 
page,  was  quite  adequate  to  giving  the  same  reality 
to  the  scheme  of  the  Sonnets.  As  much  may  be  said 
of  the  other  Elizabethans,  each  in  his  place  in  the 
scale.  From  the  literary  point  of  view,  too,  it  is  of  no 
importance  how  the  debate  be  settled.  Poetry  is  not 
valuable  because  it  tells  us  that  this  or  the  other  dead 
poet  felt  as  a  man  the  common  hopes  and  disappoint- 
ments of  humanity,  but  because  it  fixes  what  all  men 
can  feel  in  forms  of  immortal  beauty. 

The  sonnet  was  much   cultivated   in   the   literary 


200      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

society  gathered  around  Sir  Philip  Sidney  in  and  about 
1580.  His  high  birth, — he  was  son  of  Sir  Henry 
Sidney,  Lord  President  of  Wales  and  Lord  Deputy  in 
Ireland,  and  nephew  of  Elizabeth's  sinister  favourite, 
the  Earl  of  Leicester, — the  fact  that  he  stood  in  the 
relation  of  patron  to  many  of  the  men  of  letters  of 
his  time,   his  amiable  personal   character, 

Sir  P.  Sidney.  x  . 

and  the  heroic  circumstances  of  his  death 
in  a  skirmish  fought  to  prevent  a  Spanish  convoy 
from  entering  the  besieged  town  of  Zutphen  in  1586, 
have  combined  to  make  Sir  Philip  Sidney  a  very 
shining  figure.  It  is  possible  that  he  is  more  con- 
spicuous than  his  intrinsic  power  would  have  made 
him  without  the  gifts  of  fortune.  Yet  there  must" 
have  been  a  great  personal  fascination  in  the  man  who 
could  inspire  the  reverential  love  which  was  felt  for 
Sir  Philip  Sidney  by  Eulke  Greville,  while  his  Apologie 
for  Poetrie,  his  Arcadia,  the  sonnets  collected  under 
the  title  of  Astrophel  and  Stella,  with  his  other 
poems,  remain  to  prove  that  wherever  he  had  been 
born  he  would  have  left  his  mark  on  the  time. 

The  Arcadia  may  be  left  aside  for  the  present,  but 
The  Apologie  for  Poetrie,  though  written  in  prose,  can- 
The  Apoiogie  n°t>  without  violently  separating  things  akin 
for  Poetrie.  ^o  one  another,  be  taken  apart  from  his 
poetry.  It  is  to  some  extent  our  English  equivalent 
for  the  Deffense  et  Illustration  de  la  Langue  frangaise 
of  Joachim  du  Bellay,  the  manifesto  of  a  new  school 
of  poets.  The  circumstances  in  which  the  two  were 
written  differ  widely.  The  Pleiade,  with  the  French- 
man's usual  love  of  a  large  and  minute  ordonnance, 


ELIZABETHAN   POETEY.  201 

drew  up  a  scheme  for  the  conquest  and  orderly  divi- 
sion of  the  poetic  world.  Sir  Philip  Sidney  was  pro- 
voked into  writing  his  little  treatise  by  a  very  foolish 
tract  printed  in  1579,  and  named  The  School  of  Abuse, 
the  work  of  one  Stephen  Gosson  (1535-1624),  an  un- 
successful playwright  who  took  orders,  and  lived  to  a 
great  age  as  a  clergyman  of  Puritanical  leanings.  The 
School  of  Abuse,  which  was  absurdly  dedicated  to  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  without  his  consent,  and  perhaps  because 
he  was  the  nephew  of  the  chief  protector  of  the  Puri- 
tans, is  in  itself  insignificant,  except  in  so  far  as 
it  contains  a  statement  of  the  narrow  puritan  view 
that  all  modern  poetry  was  wicked,  and  that  the 
theatre  was  the  home  of  every  corruption.  It  is 
chiefly  worth  naming  now  because  Sidney  did  it  the 
signal  honour  to  give  it  an  answer.  The  Apologie 
for  Poetrie  is  in  no  sense  an  Ars  Poetica.  Sidney  does 
not  deal  with  the  formal  part  of  poetry.  He  replies 
to  those  who  belittle  it  by  an  emphatic  assertion 
that  it  is  the  noblest  of  all  things.  The  view  and 
the  spirit  of  the  Elizabethan  time  are  nowhere 
more  clearly  shown  than  in  the  Apologie.  That 
Sidney  fell  into  one  gross  heresy  is  true.  He  said 
that  poetry  was  independent  of  metre.  But  that 
was  not  an  error  likely  to  mislead  either  himself 
or  others.  Against  it  has  to  be  set  his  concep- 
tion of  poetry  as  the  noble  expression  of  that  which 
in  itself  is  fine,  made  for  a  lofty  purpose.  There  may 
not  be  much  guidance  in  this ;  but  it  is  not  as  a  guide 
that  the  Apologie  is  to  be  considered,  but  as  the  chal- 
lenge of  the  coming  English  poetry,  lyrical,  epic,  and 


202      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

dramatic — a  declaration  that  it  was  to  be  something 
more  than  ingenious  exercises  in  metres,  that  it  was 
to  be  the  expression  in  beautiful  form  of  passion  and 
thought,  of  fancy  and  imagination.  If  English  poets 
of  that  generation  looked  up  to  Sidney,  it  was  not 
only  for  the  reasons  given  above,  but  because  he  spoke 
early  and  worthily  to  the  enemy  at  the  gate.  The 
style  of  the  Apologie  is  full  of  the  animation  and 
sincerity  of  the  writer.  It  has  a  colour  and  melody 
unknown  to  the  downright  sober  English  of  his  pre- 
decessor Ascham  or  his  contemporary  Puttenham,  and 
is  free  from  the  conceits  of  his  own  Arcadia. 

Sidney  was  himself  one  of  the  first  to  sound  the 
high  note  of  the  great  Elizabethan  poetry. 

No  part  of  his  work  was  printed  in  his  life.  The 
Arcadia  was  prepared  for  publication  immediately 
after  his  death  in  1586,  but  it  did  not  appear  till 
1590,  and  then  first  in  a  pirated  edition.  A  more 
ins  sonnets  accurate  version  followed  in  1593.  The 
and  Lyrics.  sonnets  and  other  lyric  pieces,  collected 
under  the  title  of  Astrophel  and  Stella,  were  printed 
in  1591,  and  the  Apologic  for  Poetrie  in  1595.  His 
metrical  version  of  the  Psalms  remained  in  manuscript 
till  1828,  while  some  fragments  of  his  verse  have  only 
been  recovered  recently  by  Dr  Grosart.1  But  the 
date  of  printing  was  comparatively  unimportant  at  a 
time  when  a  poet's  work  not  only  could  be,  but  gen- 
erally was,  known  in  manuscript  to  the  reading  world 
long  before  it  was  published.     Sidney  was  renowned 

]  The  Complete  Poems  of  £ir  Philip  Sidney,  edited  by  the  Rev.  A. 
B.  Grosart,  '2  vols.,  1878,  in  "The  Puller's  Worthies  Library." 


ELIZABETHAN   POETKY.  203 

as  a  poet  and  prose- writer  in  his  lifetime,  and  his  case 
is  only  one  of  many.  Therefore  we  may  fairly  count 
his  influence  as  having  been  exercised  from  the  day 
when  his  sonnets  were  handed  about  among  his 
friends,  which  must  have  been  as  early  as,  if  not 
earlier  than,  1580.  Those  to  whom  they  came  must 
have  learnt  at  once  that  the  day  when  Gascoigne, 
Turberville,  Googe,  or  an  industrious  decent  verse- 
writer  of  the  stamp  of  Churchyard,  represented  Eng- 
lish poetry,  was  over.  The  sonnets  are  not  all  on  the 
same  high  level.  The  epithet  of  "jejune"  which 
Hazlitt  applied  to  Sidney  cannot  be  justly  used  of 
any  of  them ;  but  the  sonnet  beginning,  "  Phoebus 
was  judge  betweene  Jove,  Mars,  and  Love,"  or  the 
other  which  has  for  first  line,  "  I  on  my  horse  and 
love  on  me,  doth  try,"  or  the  third,  "  0  grammar- 
rules,  0  now  your  virtues  show,"  are  not  equally  safe 
against  the  other  epithet  "  frigid."  They  are  at  least 
more  marked  by  laboured  and  cold  -  blooded  conceit 
than  by  passion  or  fancy.  Yet  even  these  have  an 
accomplishment  of  form  which  was  new,  and  in  the 
others  the  greater  qualities  are  by  no  means  rarely 
shown.  The  first  in  the  accepted  order — "  Loving  in 
truth  and  faine  in  verse  my  love  to  show," — with  its 
ringing  last  line,  " '  Foole,'  said  my  Muse  to  me, 
1  looke  in  thy  heart  and  write,' "  and  the  last,  "  Leave 
me,  0  Love,  which  readiest  but  to  dust,"  are  abun- 
dantly lofty  and  passionate ;  and  were,  in  the  sense 
in  which  the  word  was  used,  "  insolent " — that  is,  un- 
precedented— in  the  English  poetry  of  that  genera- 
tion.    To  these  it  would  be  easy  to  add  many  others. 


204      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

"  With  how  slow  steps,  0  Moon  " ;  "  Having  this  day 
my  horse,  my  hand,  my  lance,"  are  but  two  of  them ; 
while  the  sonnet  "  Good  brother  Philip  "  is  a  gem  of 
gaiety  overlaying  passion.  Sidney  did  not  confine 
himself  to  the  so-called  legitimate  form  of  two  qua- 
trains and  two  tercets,  but  tried  experiments.  He 
stretched  the  term  sonnet  as  far  as  it  will  go  when 
he  applied  it  to  twelve  Alexandrines  and  a  heroic 
couplet.  Nor  was  it  in  the  sonnet  only  that  Sidney 
set  an  example.  The  songs  of  Astrophel  and  Stella 
usher  in  the  great  Elizabethan  lyric,  in  which  there 
is  nothing  to  surpass  the  "  Doubt  you  to  whom  my 
Muse  these  notes  entendeth  "  in  soaring  melody.  The 
verse  which  abounds  in  the  Arcadia  and  the  metrical 
version  of  the  Psalms  does  not  reach  the  level  of  the 
Astrophel  and  Stella.  Yet  it  appears  inferior  only 
when  judged  by  his  own  best  work,  and  the  best 
that  was  to  follow.  We  may  doubt  whether  Sidney 
has  a  claim  to  the  place  in  the  active  life  of  Eliza- 
beth's time  assigned  him  by  the  affection  of  Fulke 
Greville  and  by  tradition,  but  there  can  be  no  ques- 
tion that  he  stands  beside  Spenser  as  one  of  the 
beginners  of  the  unsurpassed  poetic  literature  of  her 
reign. 

It  is  mainly  on  historical   grounds   that   mention 

must  be  made  of  his  contemporary  Thomas  Watson 

(1557-1592).     Watson  was  a  busy  writer  of 

Watson.        V  _    J  _  _  * 

verse  and  translator,  whose  claim  to  be 
remembered  now  rests  on  this,  that  he  was  working 
at  the  sonnet  beside  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  indepen- 
dently of  him.     What  he  called  a  sonnet  was  a  set 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  205 

of  three  stanzas  of  six  lines,  each  complete  in  itself.1 
There  the  independence  of  Watson  ends.  His  sonnets 
are  avowedly  imitations  of  Italian  or  Trench  originals 
when  they  are  not  translations.  But  his  chief  work, 
the  Hecatompathia,  or  Passionate  Century  of  Love,  has 
an  undoubted  value  as  a  piece  of  evidence.  It  supplies 
a  link  in  the  chain  of  literary  history,  and  then  it 
gives  what  may  be  called  a  glimpse  into  the  workshop 
of  a  sonnet-cycle  maker.  Watson  candidly  confesses, 
in  a  "  Letter  to  the  Friendly  Eeader,"  that  his  pains  in 
suffering  the  pangs  of  love  which  his  sonnets  record 
are  "  but  supposed."  His  less  ingenuous  followers 
leave  us  to  guess  as  much  concerning  them.  But  in 
addition  to  this  there  is  an  apparatus  criticics  which 
in  everything  except  bulk  bears  a  very  close  re- 
semblance to  the  pedantic  commentaries  added  by 
his  admirers  to  the  early  editions  of  the  Spaniard 
Gongora.  Each  sonnet  is  introduced,  explained, 
annotated,  and  the  passion  it  is  to  express  described, 
and  we  are  shown  the  machinery  at  every  stage.  One 
of  these  introductions  contains  what  is,  in  fact,  a  by 
no  means  bad  criticism  on  the  whole  body  of  the 
sonnets.  "  This  Passion,"  No.  xli.,  "  is  framed  upon  a 
somewhat  tedious,  or  too  much  affected,  continuation 
of  that  figure  of  Bhetorique  whiche  of  the  Greeks  is 
called  iraXiWoyia  or  avahiirXcoa^,  of  the  Latins 
Eeduplicatio."  Somewhat  tedious,  too  much  affected, 
and  full  of  repetitions  are  these  sonnets ;  but  they 
show  the  increased  mechanical  skill  of  our  writers  of 
verse,  and   they  are   historically  interesting.     When 

1  Poems  of  Thomas  Watson,  in  Arber's  English  reprints. 


20G      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

tempted  to  make  autobiography  out  of  the  cycles  of 
other  sonneteers,  it  is  well  to  remember  Watson's 
confession,  and  also  this,  that  to  have  a  lady  for  the 
saint  of  your  literary  devotions  had  been  "  common 
form"  as  far  back  as  the  troubadours.  His  later 
work,  The  Tears  of  Fancy,  is  in  regular  quatorzains. 

The  popularity  of  the  Astrophel  and  Stella  (there 

were  three  editions  in  the  first  year  in  which  it  was 

printed — 1591),  as  well  as  the  example  it  set, 

The  sonneteers. 

help  to  account  for  the  profuse  production 
of  sonnet  cycles  in  the  next  few  years.  The  following 
list,  which  does  not  profess  to  be  exhaustive,  of  the 
collections  published  before  1595,  will  show  the  wealth 
of  Elizabethan  literature  in  this  form:  The  Parthen- 
ophil  and  Parthenophe  of  Barnabe  Barnes  (which  owes 
its  survival  to  the  accident  which  has  preserved  a 
single  copy  at  Chatsworth,  reprinted  by  Dr  Grosart), 
the  Licia  of  Giles  Fletcher,  and  the  Phillis  of  Thomas 
Lodge,  were  published  before  the  end  of  1593.  In 
1594  appeared  the  Cailia  of  William  Percy,  Constable's 
Diana,  Daniel's  Delia,  and  Drayton's  Idea.  To  these 
may  be  added  the  names  of  Willoughby's  Avisa,  which, 
however,  does  not  consist  of  sonnets,  and  the  anony- 
mous Zepheria.  Spenser's  Amoretti,  or  love  sonnets, 
belong  in  date  of  publication  to  1595.  Three  other 
collections  —  the  Fidessa  of  Griffin,  Lynch's  Diella 
(thirty-eight  sonnets,  prefixed  to  the  amorous  poem 
of  Diego  and  Genevra),  and  the  Chloris  of  W.  Smith, 
belong  to  1596.  The  sonnet,  too,  was  written  by 
others  who  did  not  construct  cycles.  Every  reader  of 
The  Faerie  Queen  knows  the  splendid   "  Me   thought 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  207 

I  saw  the  grave  where  Laura  lay,"  by  Sir  W.  Raleigh, 
and  its  less  legitimately  built  successor,  "  The  praise 
of  meaner  wits,"  which  was  addressed  less  to  Spenser's 
masterpiece  than  to  the  vanity  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 
During  many  long  fallow  years  of  silence  the  poetic 
genius  of  the  English  race  had  been  accumulating, 
and  it  wanted  but  a  touch  to  set  it  free.  Even 
among  the  poets  named  here  who  are  not  otherwise 
famous,  there  was  some  measure  of  original  power. 
Putting  aside  Spenser,  who  towers  over  all,  the  finest  J  ) 
lyric  force  was  in  Lodge,  and  the  most  uniform  accom- 
plishment in  Daniel.  It  was  left  to  Shakespeare  to 
give  the  greatest  of  English  sonnets,  but  the  form  he 
preferred  —  the  three  rhymed  quartrains  and  the 
couplet  —  had  been  polished  and  established  as  the 
prevalent  English  type  by  Daniel.1 

Although  the  Elizabethan  age  was  great  in  all  forms 
of  pure  literature,  except  the  prose  romance  and  the 
satire,  and  was  not  wholly  barren  even  of  these,  yet  it 
was  more  copious,  more  uniformly  excellent  in  the 
lyric,  than  in  any  other.  Sir  Walter  Scott  has  spoken 
of  the  wind  of  poetry  which  blew  throughout  that 
wonderful  generation.  He  was  thinking  of  the  drama ; 
but  this  general  inspiration  which  gives  its  grandeur 
to  the  activity  of  the  time  is  to  be  traced  more  widely, 
and  with  less  admixture  of  weakness  in  its  songs,  than 
in  any  other  of  its  manifold  activities.  But  this  very 
extension  of  the  lyric  faculty,  and  the  number  of  the 

1  For  Barnes,  Percy,  Constable,  Lynch,  Zcphcria,  and  Smith,  see 
Mr  Arber's  Enylish  Garner  ;  for  Daniel  and  Drayton,  vols.  iii.  and  iv. 
of  Chalmers's  British  Poets. 


208      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

singers,  makes  it  not  merely  difficult  but  impossible 
other  lyric  to  deal  fully  with  the  subject  within  the 
poetry.  limits  of  our  space.  Of  the  sonnet 
writers  we  can  speak  with  some  approach  to  com- 
pleteness, for  there  the  field,  though  large,  is  not 
boundless.  But  the  freer  forms  of  lyric  spread  over 
all  the  life  and  literature  of  England.  Ealeigh,  who 
was  a  soldier,  politician,  discoverer,  colonist,  historian, 
political  writer,  and  amateur  chemist,  was  also  a  lyric 
poet  of  more  than  note.  So  were  the  Jesuit  missionary 
Southwell  and  the  courtier  Earl  of  Oxford.  Some  of 
the  most  beautiful  lyrics  in  the  language  were  written 
by  pamphleteers,  prose  story-writers,  and  dramatists. 
The  composer  wrote  his  own  songs,  and  some  of  them 
are  among  the  best,  while  many  are  only  just  below 
that  level.  So  much  was  the  time  penetrated  by  poetic 
fire,  that  gems  of  verse  are  to  be  found  in  its  song- 
books  for  which  no  known  author  can  be  traced. 

The  general  wealth  of  the  time  in  lyric  poetry  can 
be  better  appreciated  by  taking  its  miscellaneous  col- 
lections, whether  of  pure  poetry  or  of  verse  written  to 
accompany  music,  than  by  a  list  of  the  names  of  writers 
who  may  be  held  to  deserve  particular  mention.  Pitt- 
ing aside  TotteVs  Miscellany  as  belonging  to  an  earlier 
time,  though  it  was  repeatedly  reprinted  under  Eliza- 
beth, and  The  Mirror  of  Magistrates,  which  stands 
apart,  there  were  numerous  collections  of  minor  pieces 
made  in  the  queen's  reign.  The  Paradise  of  Dainty 
tu  collections  Devises,  1576;  A  Gorgeous  Gallery  of  Gal- 
and  song-books.  ianf  Inventions,  1578;  A  Handful  of 
Pleasant    Delights,    1584;     The   Phoenix    Nest,    1593; 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  209 

England's  Helicon,  1600 ;  A  Poetical  Rhapsody,  1602 ; 
England's  Parnassus,  1600 ;  and  Belvedere,  or  the 
Garden  of  the  Muses,  in  the  same  year,  are  the  names 
of  some  of  them.  To  these  are  to  be  added  the  list 
of  song-books  collected  or  written  by  Byrd,  Yonge, 
Campion,  Dowland,  Morley,  Alison,  Wilbye,  and 
others.1  Some  of  the  poems  in  these  collections  have 
always  been  known,  but  they  contain  many  which  had 
fallen  entirely  into  obscurity.  There  can  have  been 
very  few  readers  to  whom  Mr  Bullen's  collection,  made 
from  a  class  of  books  which  in  most  ages  are  full  of  mere 
insipidities,  was  not  a  revelation.  The  point  is  that  it 
represents  not  the  exceptional  work  of  the  time,  but 
the  average  production,  which  we  may  almost  call 
commercial,  or  the  poets'  corner,  and  that  being  this, 
it  maintains  such  an  extraordinarily  high  level  of  in- 
spiration and  melody.  It  is  not  a  mere  question  of 
that  workmanlike  dexterity  which  a  great  poet,  as 
Scott  said  half  humorously,  but  not  without  truth,  to 
Moore,  can  teach  a  receptive  generation.  Spenser 
himself  could  never  have  taught  anybody  to  produce 
such  a  piece  of  genuine  lyric  poetry  as  the  "Fain 
would  I  change  that  note,"  which  Mr  Bullen  quotes 
from  Captain  Hume's  First  Part  of  Airs.  It,  and 
much  else  only  less  good,  would  not  have  been  written 
without  Spenser  and  Sidney ;  but  it  is  one  thing  to  be 
influenced  by  great  models,  and  another  merely  to 
echo  them. 

1  Mr  Arber  in  his  English  Garner,  and  Mr  Bullen  in  his  Lyrics  from 
the  Song-books  of  the  Elizabethan  Age,  1887,  have  made  selections  from 
these  sources. 

O 


210      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

The  love  of  verse  led  in  England,  as  in  Spain,  to  the 
production  of  not  a  little  in  what  is  almost  inevitably 
The  historical   a  bastard  kind— the  historical  poem.     By 
poems.  attempting  to  do  in  poetry  what  could  be 

adequately  done  in  prose,  the  authors  of  The  History 
of  the  Civil  War  or  of  The  Barons'  War,  condemned 
themselves  to  be  often  dull,  or  to  endeavour  to  escape 
dulness  by  mixing  purely  romantic  episodes  with  what 
professes  to  be  record  of  matter  of  fact.  The  romance 
is  superfluous  to  those  who  read  for  the  history,  and 
the  history  is  tiresome  to  those  who  read  for  the 
romance.  Our  own  historical  poems  are  commonly 
the  more  subject  to  the  danger  of  dulness,  because  the 
authors,  unlike  the  Spaniards,  did  not,  as  a  rule,  choose 
the  great  events  of  their  own  time,  or  of  the  previous 
generation,  of  which  the  memory  was  still  fresh.  They 
went  back  to  the  past,  which  they  could  only  know 
through  books.  This  would  have  done  no  harm  if  they 
had  used  their  authorities  only  to  find  "  local  colour  " 
for  their  romance.  But  they  did  not.  They  aimed  at 
even  a  minute  historical  accuracy,  and  thereby  con- 
demned themselves  to  produce  works  of  learning  in  an 
inappropriate  shape.  It  is  no  doubt  bad  criticism  to 
condemn  any  form  of  literature  for  being  itself  and 
not  another.  Yet  we  could  spare  even  the  Polyolhion 
for  an  Elizabethan  Mariana,  which  Drayton,  whose 
prose  was  excellent  and  whose  learning  was  great, 
misht  well  have  been,  and  still  have  left  himself  free 
to  write  his  sonnets,  his  Nymphidia,  and  his  Ballad  of 
Agincourt. 

The  curious  literary  bad  fortune  which  has  pursued 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  211 

the  achievements  of  Englishmen  at  sea  is  well  illus- 
Fitz-Gcoffrey  trated  by  the  vehement,  but  also  frothy  and 
andMarkham.  flamboyant,  poem  of  Charles  Fitz-Geoffrey, 
called  Sir  Francis  Drake,  his  Honourable  Life's  Com- 
mendation and  his  Tragical  Death's  Lamentation.  It  is 
in  the  seven-line  stanza  which  Drayton,  after  first 
trying  it,  renounced  as  too  soft  for  the  subject  of  his 
Barons'  War.  Fitz-  Geoffrey  wraps  up  the  substantial 
figure  of  Sir  Francis  in  clouds  of  hyperbole,  and  makes 
a  terrible  abuse  of  the  figure  called  "  by  the  Latines 
Beduplicatio."  We  see  the  great  corsair  only  in 
glimpses  through  the  very  smoky  flames  of  Fitz- 
Geoffrey's  melodious  rhetoric.  The  most  honourable 
Tragedie  of  Sir  Richard  Grinvill,  by  Gervase  Mark- 
ham,  in  an  eight-lined  stanza,  very  flowing  and  mytho- 
logical, has  much  the  same  defect.  The  author,  who 
founded  his  poem  on  Ealeigh's  pamphlet  describing 
the  last  fight  of  the  Eevenge,  endeavours  to  "out- 
cracke  the  scarcrow  thunderbolt." 

Three  names  stand  out  among  the  writers  of  his- 
torical poems — William  Warner,  because  he  was  at 
once  a  forerunner  to  the  others  and  a  link  between 
the  poetry  of  the  earlier  and  the  later  Elizabethans  ; 
Daniel,  for  a  certain  mild,  yet  grave,  wisdom ;  Dray- 
ton, for  his  manly  force  and  intrinsic  poetic  power. 
Warner,  who  was  born  about  1567,  and  who  certainly 
died  in  March   1609  (the  year  in  which 

Warner.  x  J 

Shakespeare  s  Sonnets  were  published),  was 
attached  in  some  uncertain  relationship  as  client  or 
servant  to  the  Careys,  Lords  Hunsdon.  His  historical 
poem,  Albiorts  England,  was  in  part  written  before 


212      EUROPEAN  LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

1586,  when  it  was  suppressed  for  some  unknown 
reason  by  an  order  of  the  Star  Chamber.1  If  this 
date  is  correct,  the  decidedly  jejune  account  of  the 
defeat  of  the  Armada,  and  the  most  unfriendly  passage 
on  the  execution  of  Queen  Mary,  must  have  been 
added  later.  Warner  had  written  a  collection  of 
prose  stories  called  Syrinx,  as  he  says,  "  with  accept- 
ance." But  his  claim  to  be  remembered  rests  on  his 
Albion's  England,  a  long  poem  in  the  old  seven-foot  or 
fourteen-syllable  metre,  on  the  history,  and  more  par- 
ticularly on  the  legends  of  the  history,  of  England. 
His  well  -  established  reputation  as  "  a  good,  honest, 
plain  writer"  is  fully  deserved.  Warner,  indeed, 
carries  plainness  so  far  that  in  the  most  poetic  pas- 
sage of  his  book — the  episode  of  Curan  and  Argentill, 
in  which  there  is  a  genuine  simple  poetry — he  tells  us 
that  the  hero  "  wiped  the  drivel  from  his  beard."  Be- 
ginning at  the  creation  of  the  world,  he  comes  down 
to  his  own  time,  with  constant  digressions  into  ro- 
mantic episodes  of  his  own  growing,  and  classical  or 
Biblical  tales.  He  does  not  always  escape  the  tendency 
of  his  metre  to  drop  into  a  jog-trot,  yet  in  the  main 
he  canters  briskly  along  with  a  very  fair  proportion  of 
spirited  lines.  His  farewell  to  Queen  Mary  is  worth 
quoting,  both  as  an  example  of  his  verse  and  as  a  rather 
engaging  mixture  of  charity  and  implacability : — 

"Then  to  her  wofull  servants  did  she  pass  a  kind  a-dew, 
And  kissing  oft  her  crucifix,  unto  the  block  she  drew, 
And  fearless,  as  if  glad  to  dye,  did  dye  to  papisme  trew. 


1  Chalmers's  British  Poets,  vol.  iv. 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  213 

Which  and  her  other  errors  (who  in  all  did  ever  erre) 
Unto  the  judge  of  mercie  and  of  justice  we  referre. 
If  ever  such  conspirator  of  it  impenitent, 
If  ever  soule  pope-scooled  so,  that  sea  to  Heaven  sent, 
If  ever  one  ill  lived  did  dye  a  papist  Godwards  bent, 
Then  happie  she.     But  so  or  not,  it  happie  is  for  us, 
That  of  so  dangerous  a  foe  we  are  delivered  thus." 

His  moderate  length  (a  fairly  girt  reader  can  begin 
and  end  him  in  a  longish  evening),  his  disregard  for 
mere  historical  fact,  and  a  certain  childish  downright- 
ness,  make  Warner  easier  reading  than  much  better 
poets.  Although  Warner  adhered  to  the  f  ourteener  in 
the  face  of  Spenser  and  Sidney,  he  was  so  far  affected 
by  their  example  that  he  generally  raised  his  verse 
above  the  mere  rocking-horse  motion,  which  is  its 
special  bane. 

Samuel  Daniel,  the  son  of  a  music-master,  was  born 

near  Taunton  in  1562,  and  was  educated  at  Magdalen 

Hall,    Oxford.      He  began  by  translating 

Daniel.  '  ,  ^       .  ,   ,  .       n 

the  Jmprese  ot  Faulus  Jovius,  and  his  first 
independent  works  were  his  sonnets  to  Delia,  already 
mentioned.  It  is  possible  that  he  went  abroad  as 
servant  to  Elizabeth's  ambassador  in  France,  Lord 
Stafford,  and  that  he  visited  Italy  before  1590. 
Although  Daniel  wrote  two  tragedies — Cleopatra  and 
Philotas — they  were  on  the  classical  model,  which 
our  stage  has  never  tolerated,  and  he  therefore  could 
not  live  by  literature,  since  it  was  then  only  the 
theatre  which  paid.  It  was  necessary  for  him  to 
seek  support  in  the  service  of  rich  people.  He  found 
it  in  the  patronage  of  the  Pembroke  family,  and  was 
afterwards  tutor  to  the  daughter  of  the  famous  sea- 


214      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

faring  Earl  of  Cumberland.  In  his  later  years  he  was 
in  the  service  of  Queen  Anne,  the  wife  of  James  L,  as 
"  inspector  of  the  children  of  the  Queen's  revels,"  and 
as  groom  or  "gentleman  extraordinary  of  her  majesty's 
private  chamber/5  At  the  end  he  appears  to  have 
achieved  independence,  for  he  died  on  a  farm  of  his 
own  near  Beckington  in  1619. 

In  spite  of  the  interruptions  caused  by  his  tutoring, 
at  which  he  repined  not  a  little,  Daniel  was  a  volu- 
minous writer.  He  was  the  author  in  prose  of  a 
history  of  England  down  to  the  reign  of  Edward  III., 
popular  in  its  day,  and  of  the  excellent  Defence  of 
Rime  in  answer  to  Campion's  belated  plea  for  "  pure 
versifying."  But  it  is  as  a  poet  that  Daniel  ranks  in 
English  literature,  though  with  a  limitation,  somewhat 
roughly  worded  by  his  stronger  contemporary  Dray- 
ton, who  said  that  "  his  manner  better  fitted  prose." 
This  would  be  a  very  unfair  judgment  if  it  were 
applied  to  all  his  work  without  qualification.  The 
Complaint  of  Rosamonde,  his  first  considerable  poem, 
published  in  1592,  is  neither  in  manner  nor  matter 
better  fitted  for  prose*  It  is  a  very  pcetic  retelling  of 
the  legend  of  Henry  II.'s  mistress  in  the  favourite 
seven-line  stanza.  His  moral  epistles  in  verse  escape 
the  vice  of  mere  moralising  by  virtue  of  a  loftiness  of 
sentiment  which  is  fitly  enough  wedded  to  poetic  form. 
Yet  there  is  none  of  the  "  lofty,  insolent,  and  pas- 
sionate" note  of  the  Elizabethans  in  Daniel,  and 
Drayton's  harsh  sentence  may  be  applied  with  little 
or  no  restriction  to  the  Civil  Wars.  Daniel's  claim  to 
honour  was  as  well  stated  by  himself   in  some  pre- 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  215 

fatory  verses  to  an  edition  of  his  poems  in  1607  as  by 
any  of  the  many  good  judges  of  literature  who  have 
praised  him : — 

"  I  know  I  shall  be  read  among  the  rest 

So  long  as  men  speak  English,  and  so  long 
As  verse  and  virtue  shall  be  in  request, 
Or  grace  to  honest  industry  belong." 

Grace  to  honest  industry  seems  but  a  humble  plea 
for  the  poet.  We  may  paraphrase  it  with  more 
dignity  and  not  less  truth  by  saying  that  Daniel  was  a 
most  accomplished  and  conscientious  artist  in  verse, 
who  had  a  genuine,  but  mild,  poetic  nature.  The  care 
he  took  to  revise  his  work  is  evidence  of  his  con- 
science as  a  workman,  and  the  fact  that  his  changes 
were  commonly  for  the  better  is  proof  of  his  judgment. 
It  is  mainly  the  beauty  of  his  English  which  will  cause 
him  to  be  read  for  ever  among  the  rest.  If  it  never 
has  the  splendour  of  the  greatest  Elizabethan  poetry, 
neither  does  it  fall  into  "  King  Cambyses'  vein,"  into 
the  roaring  fury  which  gave  an  outlet  to  the  exuberant 
energy  of  that  time.  Southey  gave  Daniel  as  the 
nearest  English  equivalent  to  Camoens,  on  the  ground 
that  the  main  charm  of  both  is  the  even  purity  of 
their  language.  This  of  itself  is  hardly  compensation 
enough  for  the  undoubted  tediousness  of  his  Civil  Wars, 
which  tell  the  essentially  dreary  history  of  the  Wars  of 
the  Eoses  down  to  the  marriage  of  Edward  IV.1 

It  was  perhaps  partly  his  dislike  of  the  Bohemian 
habits  of  his  brother  men  of  letters  which  has  left  the 

1  Chalmers's  British  Poets,  vol.  iii.     Complete  works,  edited  by  Dr 
Grosart.     5  vols.,  1885-1896. 


216      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

life  of  Michael  Drayton  so  obscure.  He  was  a  Warwick- 
shire man  of  respectable  parentage,  but  so  poor  that 
he  owed  his  education  to  the  kindness  of  patrons.  The 
date  of  his  birth  was  1563,  and  he  died  in  1631,  well 
into  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  If  confidence  can  be 
placed  in  the  jottings  of  Drummond  of  Hawthornden, 
there  was  at  one  time  an  armed  neutrality  between 
Jonson  and  Drayton ;  but  Jonson  wrote  some  highly 
laudatory  verses  on  the  Polyolbion,  and  we  need  not 
place  too  much  reliance  on  casual  remarks  he  threw 
out  in  conversation  when  he  had  no  knowledge  that 
his  words  were  to  be  written  down.  It  is  known,  too, 
that  Drayton  was  patronised  by  Prince  Henry,  who  in 
his  short  life  was  the  friend  of  many  men  of  pith  and 
substance,  from  Ealeigh  to  Phineas  Pett  the  ship- 
builder. Ill-founded  legend  asserts  that  he  was  of  the 
party  in  the  carouse  which  is  said  to  have  been  the 
death  of  Shakespeare. 

Drayton *  was  a  stronger  man  than  Daniel,  and  there 

came  forth  more  sweetness  from  him.     No  writer  of 

the    time    was    more    voluminous.       The 

Drayton.  . 

sonnets,  to  which  he  seems  to  have  heen 
somewhat  indifferent,  form  a  very  small  portion  of  his 
work.  Whenever  he  began  to  write  (it  is  said  that  his 
love  of  literature  was  shown  when  he  was  a  boy),  he 
did  not  publish  early.  His  first  poem — A  Harmonie  of 
the  Church — appeared  in  1591.  It  was  suppressed  by 
the  censorship,  then  directed  by  Archbishop  Whitgift, 

1  Chalmers's  British  Poets,  vol.  iv.  A  very  thorough  monograph 
on  Drayton  by  Mr  0.  Elton  has  been  published  by  the  Spenser 
Society,  1895. 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  217 

but  republished  under  another  title,  The  Heavenly 
Harmonie  of  Spiritual  Songs  and  Holy  Hymns,  in 
1610.  In  1593  he  published  nine  eclogues  with  the 
title  of  Idea,  a  name  also  given  to  the  sonnets  printed 
in  1594.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  famous  sonnet 
beginning,  "  Since  there's  no  help,  come  let  us  kiss  and 
part/'  which  is  so  superior  to  the  others,  and  so  like 
Shakespeare's,  was  first  included  in  the  edition  of 
1619.  Drayton,  like  Daniel,  was  much  in  the  habit  of 
revising  his  work.  He  not  uncommonly  incorporated 
his  earlier  poems  in  his  later  with  great  changes.  In 
1596  appeared  the  awkwardly  named  Mortimeriados,  in 
the  seven-line  stanza,  recast  and  republished  in  ottava 
rima  in  1603  under  the  title  of  The  Barons'  Wars. 
Between  these  two  came  the  Heroical  Epistles  in  1597. 
In  1604  Drayton  made  a  most  unfortunate  attempt  to 
win  the  favour  of  James  I.  by  flattery,  and  he  also 
published  a  satirical  poem,  The  Owl,  and  his  Moses  in  a 
Map  of  his  Miracles.  To  1605  belongs  a  collection  of 
short  poems,  including  the  most  famous  of  his  minor 
poems,  except  the  universally  known  sonnet,  the 
magnificent  Ballad  of  Agincourt.  The  years  which 
follow  were  employed  in  the  composition  of  his  vast 
PolyoTbion,  of  which  nineteen  books  appeared  in  1613, 
and  which  was  completed  in  1622.  Between  these 
dates  he  brought  out  an  edition  of  his  poems  in  1619. 
In  1627  he  went  back  on  the  battle  of  Agincourt, 
and  produced  the  poem  of  that  name,  together  with 
Nympihidia  and  The  Miseries  of  Queen  Margaret.  At 
the  very  close  of  his  life,  in  1630,  he  published  the 
gay  and  graceful  Muses'  Elysium.     He  wrote  also  for 


218      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

the  stage,  to  which  he  had  no  natural  inclination,  in 
an  occasional  and  subordinate  way. 

This  list,  which  is  not  exhaustive,  will  show  that 
the  forty  years  of  Drayton's  known  activity  were 
remarkably  well  filled.  And  the  quality  of  this  great 
bulk  of  work  was  not  less  remarkable  than  the 
quantity.  It  may  be  allowed  at  once,  and  without 
conceding  too  much  to  the  eighteenth-century  criti- 
cism, which  talked  of  his  "creeping  narrative,"  that 
much  of  his  poetry  is  dull  to  other  readers  than  those 
who  find  all  dull  except  the  last  smart  short  story  or 
newspaper  scandal.  The  reader  who  can  master  The 
Battle  of  Agincourt  (not  the  Ballad),  The  Miseries  of 
Queen  Margaret,  and  The  Barons'  Wars  without  an 
effort  may  hold  himself  armed  against  the  more 
laborious  forms  of  study.  Drayton  indeed  tempted 
dulness  when  he  chose  for  subject  the  Barons'  War 
of  Edward  II.'s  reign,  and  did  not  also  decide  to  make 
the  "she- wolf  of  France"  his  heroine  and  to  throw 
history  to  the  winds.  Yet  even  in  these  the  strong 
poetical  faculty  of  the  writer  can  never  be  forgotten. 
The  longest  of  all  his  poems  —  the  Polyolbion,  or 
"  Chorographical  Description  of  all  the  Tracts,  Eivers, 
Mountains,  Forests,  and  other  parts  of  Great  Britain," 
which  may  be  described  as  a  poetical  guide-book  to 
his  native  country — is  not  dull,  though  it  cannot  be 
praised  as  exciting.  Drayton  may  have  made  an 
error  when  he  decided  to  write  it  in  the  long  twelve- 
syllable  line,  and  not  in  his  favourite  eight-line  stanza, 
which,  in  the  words  of  his  preface  to  The  Barons' 
Wars,  "  both  holds  the  time  clean  through  to  the  base 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  219 

of  the  column,  which  is  the  couplet  at  the  foot  or 
bottom,  and  closeth  not  but  with  a  full  satisfaction  to 
the  ear  for  so  long  detention."  Yet  he  has  mastered 
his  unwieldy  verse,  and  after  a  time,  when  the 
reader's  ear  has  become  attuned  to  the  melody,  his  at 
first  rather  strange  mixture  of  topography,  legend,  and 
vigorous  romantic  flashes  rolls  on  in  a  majestic  course. 
It  is  a  proof  of  the  essential  strength  of  Drayton  that 
his  most  delicate  work — the  fairy  poetry  of  the  Nym- 
phidia  and  the  Nymphalls  or  Muses'  Elysium — belongs 
to  his  later  years.     He  grew  sweet  as  he  mellowed. 

A  time  so  rich  as  the  Elizabethan  in  new  forms  of 
literature  could  hardly  fail  to  produce  the   satirist. 
The  satiric     In  this  case  also  there  were  Italian  and, 
poets.  ft  nee(j  hardly  De  added,  Classic  models  to 

follow,,  and  they  were  followed.  Satiric  writing  there 
had  always  been,  and  that  inevitably,  since  so  soon  as 
men  began  to  record  observation  at  all  they  would  see 
that  there  was  much  vice  and  folly  in  the  world,  and 
from  this  experience  all  satire  springs.  The  satiric 
spirit  abounded  in  the  prose  pamphlet  literature  of 
the  time.  Between  this  and  the  help  afforded  by  the 
Latin  models,  who  supplied  the  ready-made  mould, 
the  poetic  satirists  were  led  forward  by  the  hand. 
As  a  class,  and  in  so  far  as  they  were  satirists,  they 
were  the  least  interesting  body  of  writers  of  their 
time.  It  is  very  necessary  to  limit  this  estimate  to 
their  satires ;  for  the  four  who  may  be  mentioned 
here  are  all,  for  one  reason  or  another,  notable  men, 
or  even  more.  Lodge,  without  ever  attaining  to 
originality  or  power  of  the  first  order,  was  a  success- 


220      EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

ful  writer  in  many  kinds.  Marston  has  a  deservedly 
high  place  in  our  dramatic  literature.  Hall,  though 
that  part  of  his  life  lies  outside  the  scope  of  this 
book,  was  a  divine  and  controversialist  of  mark  in 
his  later  years.  Donne,  who  however  belongs  in  the 
main  to  a  later  time,  is  one  of  the  most  enigmat- 
ical and  debated,  alternately  one  of  the  most  attrac- 
tive and  most  repellent,  figures  in  English  literature. 
If  Hall's  boast  in  the  Prologue  to  his  Satires — 

"  I  first  adventure,  follow  me  who  list, 
And  be  the  second  English  Satirist," 

is  to  be  taken  seriously,  he  must  be  supposed  to  have 
claimed  the  honour  of  leading.  If  so,  he  must  also 
be  presumed  not  to  have  known  The  Steel  Glass  of 
Gascoigne,  an  undeniable  though  rambling  and  ineffec- 
tive satire,  belonging  to  the  first  half  of  the  queen's 
reign.  He  certainly  ignored  the  earlier  claim  of 
Lodge,  whose  Fig  for  Momus  appeared  in  1595,  two 
years  before  the  first  six  books  of  Hall's  Virgidemi- 
arum.  But  it  may  be  that  he  wrote  long  before  he 
printed,  and  in  any  case  the  originality  is  not  great 
enough  to  be  worth  fighting  over,  since  both  were 
followers  of  Latin  originals ;  while  it  appears  more 
than  probable  that  Marston  and  Donne  were  turning 
their  thoughts  in  the  same  direction  about  the  same 
time.  In  fact,  the  Poetic  Satire  was  so  certain  to 
arise  that  many  men  may  well  have  begun  it  together 

in  complete  independence  one  of  another. 

The  satire  of  Lodge  is  confessedly  a  mere 
echo  of  Horace. 


ELIZABETHAN   POETRY.  221 

This  cannot  be  said  of  the  Satires  of  Joseph  Hall. 
Hall,  who  in  his  very  interesting  brief  autobiography 
says  that  he  was  born  on  the  1st  January, 
1574  (which,  if  he  went  by  the  old  official 
calendar,  means  1575),  and  was  educated  at  the  Puri- 
tan College  of  Emmanuel,  Cambridge,  lived  to  attain 
the  bishopric  of  Exeter,  to  play  a  conspicuous  part  in 
the  early  days  of  the  Long  Parliament,  to  be  trans- 
lated to  Norwich  in  the  eclipse  of  King  Charles's 
fortunes,  and  to  be  rabbled  out  of  his  palace  by  the 
Puritans.  He  died  at  Heigham  in  1656.  His  Satires, 
therefore,  appeared  when  he  was  at  the  utmost  only 
twenty-three.  Although  marked  by  a  certain  youth- 
ful loftiness  of  moral  pose  and  some  impudence,  they 
show  an  undoubted  maturity  of  form  much  more  meri- 
torious then  than  it  would  be  now,  when  there  is  so 
much  more  in  English  to  copy.  In  "  A  Postscript  to 
the  Eeader,"  printed  with  the  first  issue  of  the  Virgi- 
demiarum  (a  pedantic  title  taken  from  Virgidemia,  a 
gathering  of  rods),  he  states  what  undoubtedly  was 
the  literary  faith  of  the  satirists  of  the  time :  "  It  is 
not  for  every  one  to  relish  a  true  natural  satire,  being 
of  itself,  besides  the  nature  and  inbred  bitterness  and 
tartness  of  particulars,  both  hard  of  conceit  and  harsh 
of  style,  and  therefore  cannot  but  be  unpleasing  both 
to  the  unskilful  and  over -musical  ear."  In  other 
words,  a  rough  form  and  a  deliberate  violation  of 
melody  were  proper  to  satire.  Marston  and  Donne 
acted  on  that  rule.  But  Hall  in  his  own  verses  is 
not  markedly  hard  of  conceit  or  harsh  of  style.  His 
couplets    flow    easily    enough,   carrying    with    them 


222      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

shrewd  but  not  very  important  remarks  on  the  con- 
tradictions of  sinners.  We  can  well  believe  that 
when  Pope  was  shown  them  late  in  life  he  wished 
he  had  seen  them  sooner,  and  that  he  thought  the 
first  satire  of  the  sixth  book  "  optima  satira."  Hall's 
attitude  of  superiority  to  a  sinful  world  is  rather 
comic  in  a  young  gentleman  who  knew  no  more  of 
it  than  lay  inside  the  walls  of  "pure  Emmanuel." 
His  worst  fault  was  a  habit  of  sniffing  at  contem- 
porary poets,  whose  poetic  shoe-latchet  he  was  not 
worthy  to  undo.  He  falls  upon  the  sonneteers  and 
their  "Blowesses"  (i.e.,  Blowsibellas)  after  a  fashion 
afterwards  bettered  by  Swift  with  his  incomparable 
brutality.1 

Marston's  first  set  of  Satires  were  printed  under  the 
assumed  name  of  W.  Kinsayder  in  1598,  together 
with  a  poem  called  Pygmalion's  Image.  A 
second  instalment  of  the  Satires  followed 
next  year,  and  both  bear  the  same  title — The  Scourge 
of  Villainy.  There  was  not  much  villainy  to  which 
Marston  had  better  call  to  apply  the  scourge  than  the 
greasy  lubricity  of  Pygmalion's  Image.  He  preferred 
to  scold  at  his  contemporaries  in  verse  which  is  as 
pleasant  to  read  as  charcoal  would  be  to  eat,  and 
to  lecture  an  imaginary  world  made  up  of  vices  which 
he  took  at  second  hand  from  Latin  books,  in  a  style 
which  raises  the  image  of  ancient  Pistol  unpacking  his 
heart  with  curses. 

1  Satires  by  Joseph  Hall.     Chiswick  Press,  1824. 


223 


CHAPTEE   VIII. 

THE     EARLIER     DRAMATISTS. 

THE  FIRST  PLATS — RESISTANCE  TO  CLASSIC  INFLUENCE — ADVANTAGES  OF 
THIS  —  AND  THE  LIMITATIONS  —  THE  DRAMATIC  QUALITY — CLASSIC, 
SPANISH,  AND  FRENCH  DRAMA  —  UNITY  IN  THE  ENGLISH  PLAYS 
—  'RALPH  ROISTER  DOISTER  '  —  '  GAMMER  GURTON'S  NEEDLE  '  — 
'GORBODUC' — FORMATION  OF  THE  THEATRE — LYLY — GREENE — PEELE 
— KYD — MARLOWE — CHARACTER  OF  THESE  WRITERS— SHAKESPEARE 
— GUESSES  ABOUT  HIS  LIFE — ORDER  OF  HIS  WORK — ESTIMATES  OF 
SHAKESPEARE — DIVISIONS  OF  HIS  WORK — THE  POEMS — THE  DRAMAS 
— THE   REALITY   OF   SHAKESPEARE'S   CHARACTERS. 

Three  plays  stand  at  the  threshold  of  the  Elizabethan 

drama — Ralph  Roister  Doister,  Gammer  Gurton's  Needle, 

and  Gorhoduc,  or  Ferrex  and  Porrex.     None 

The  first  plays.  .      _.  . 

of  the  three  indicate  the  course  which  that 
dramatic  literature  was  destined  to  take.  Gammer 
Gurton's  Needle  is  a  spirited  farce  of  low  life,  holding 
if  from  anything,  then  from  the  mediaeval  comedy 
as  it  nourished  in  France.  Ralph  Roister  Doister,  as 
became  the  work  of  a  schoolmaster,  is  full  of  reminis- 
cences of  the  Latin  comedy.  Gorhoduc  is  an  open 
imitation  of  the  Senecan  tragedy. 

When  the  great  and  natural  authority  of  the  classic 


224      EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

models  is  allowed  for — when  we  remember  how  many 
writers  for  the  stage,  not  only  here   but 

Resistance  to  . 

the  classic  wherever  the  theatre  nourished,  were  uni- 
versity wits — when  the  taste  of  the  time 
for  moralising  is  taken  into  account,  it  is  rather  to  be 
wondered  at  that  this  pattern  proved  so  unattractive 
as  it  did.  The  predominance  of  the  French  drama  of 
the  seventeenth  century  must  not  lead  us  into  over- 
estimating the  rarity  of  the  independence  required,  to 
reject  the  classic  model  in  the  time  of  the  Eenaissance. 
Corneille  and  Eacine  did  indeed  establish  a  "  correct " 
form  of  tragedy,  largely  constructed  on  classic  lines. 
But  this  was  part  of  a  general,  and  far  from  inexcus- 
able, reaction  towards  order,  measure,  and  restraint  in 
literature.  During  the  Eenaissance  the  influence  of 
the  classic  drama  was  confined  to  producing  a  false 
dawn  of  the  French  tragedy.  Italy  achieved  no  con- 
siderable drama.  The  classics,  both  the  great  Greek 
and  the  lesser  Latin,  were  presented  to  Spain  in 
translations,  and  by  scholarly  critics,  only  to  be 
rejected.  The  Nise  Lastimosa  of  Geronimo  Bermudez, 
with  here  and  there  a  tentative  effort  in  early  plays, 
is  all  that  remains  of  the  teaching  of  translators  and 
men  of  learning.  Among  ourselves  Gorboduc  had 
little  immediate  following,  and  when  Daniel  in  the 
very  early  seventeenth  century  tried  to  succeed  where 
Sackville  had  failed,  he  wrote  for  the  literary  coterie 
of  the  Countess  of  Pembroke  and  for  nobody  else. 
Between  the  two  there  is  Kyd's  translation  of  Garnier's 
Cornelia  or  so,  and  that  is  all. 

For  this  we  have  undoubtedly  reason  to  be  thankful, 


THE   EARLIER   DRAMATISTS.  225 

and  so  have  the  Spaniards.  Both  nations  had  the 
Advantages  of  spirit  to  be  themselves  on  their  stage, 
this.  which   is   something ;    and   then  we   have 

had  a  freer  Shakespeare,  a  more  spontaneous  Lope, 
than  would  have  been  possible  if  the  three  unities  and 
the  complete  separation  of  tragedy  from  comedy  had 
been  accepted  in  the  two  countries.  Yet  we  may  be 
thankful  with  more  moderation  than  we  commonly 
show.  It  is  not  to  be  taken  for  granted  that  the 
choice  lay  between  freedom  and  a  convention.  It 
was  rather  between  one  convention  and  another. 
The  Spanish  stage  is  not  unconventional.  It  has  a 
different  convention  from  the  French  —  that  is  all. 
Ours  made  its  own  rules,  less  precise  than  the  Spanish 
or  the  classical,  but  none  the  less  real.  "Tanto  se 
pierde  por  carta  de  mas,  como  por  carta  de  menos,"  says 
the  Spanish  proverb.  The  card  too  much  is  a  loss 
as  much  as  the  card  too  little ;  and  a  convention  which 
says  "  You  shall "  is  no  less  tyrannical  than  the  con- 
vention which  says  "  You  shall  not."  A  drama  which 
Andthciimi-  wiH  allow  no  mixture  of  comedy  with 
tations.  tragedy  is  unquestionably  limited,  and  is 

condemned  to  give  no  full  picture  of  life.  But  a 
drama  which  is  forced  to  insert  comic  scenes  is 
equally  under  an  obligation.  The  clown  who  figures 
as  porter  in  Macbeth  is  not  necessarily  more  in  place 
than  the  murder  of  a  king  would  have  been  in  The 
Taming  of  the  Shrew.  To  say  that  you  may  fairly 
keep  your  comedy  unmixed  by  tragedy,  but  must 
never  allow  your  tragedy  to  be  unrelieved  by  comic 
scenes,  is   as   arbitrary  a   rule   as   any  other.      Un- 

P 


226      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

doubtedly  the  reaction  from  the  strained  emotion 
of  tragedy  to  lighter  feeling  is  natural — and  that  is 
the  sufficient  artistic  justification  for  the  jests  of 
Hamlet.  But  this  just  observation  does  not  excuse 
the  insertion  into  a  tragic  action  of  independent 
comic  scenes  which  have  no  necessary  connection 
with  the  main  personages  and  action. 

The  history  of  the  Elizabethan  drama  is  the  history 
of  the  formation  of  an  English  dramatic  convention. 
The  questions  are  what  it  was,  and  what  were  its 
merits.  These  questions  are  not  settled  by  the  answer 
that  Shakespeare  was  the  greatest  of  dramatists.  That 
he  would  have  been  in  any  case.  What  is  greatest  in 
him — his  universal  sympathy  with  all  nature  and  his 
unerring  truth  to  life  —  was  wholly  personal.  He 
shared  it  with  nobody.  If  the  Elizabethan  drama  is 
Shakespeare,  and  a  ring  of  men  whom  we  are  content 
to  know  wholly  by  "  beauties,"  which  beauties,  again, 
are  lyric  poetry  and  not  drama,  then  it  is  quite  super- 
fluous to  treat  it  as  dramatic  literature  at  all.  The 
Bible  does  not  belong  to  a  class,  and  neither  does 
Shakespeare  in  those  qualities  which  raise  him  above 
all  others.  "We  must  look  at  him  as  standing  apart ; 
and  as  for  the  others,  if  that  for  which  they  are  worth 
studying  is  their  lyric  poetry,  or  their  mighty  line,  or 
this  or  that  touch  of  genuine  pathos  or  fine  interpreta- 
tion of  character  in  flashes,  it  is  unnecessary  to  con- 
sider them  as  writers  of  plays.  If  there  was  an  Eliza- 
bethan dramatic  literature  in  any  other  sense  than 
this,  that  many  poets  wrote  for  the  stage  and  put 
noble  poetry  into  a  machinery  not  essentially  dramatic, 


THE   EARLIER   DRAMATISTS.  227 

it  must  be  studied  apart  from  what  was  purely  Shake- 
speare. And  that  is  not  difficult  to  do.  On  his  pre- 
decessors he  could  have  no  effect,  and  it  is  only 
necessary  to  turn  from  him  to  any  contemporary  or 
successor  to  see  how  little  they  shared  with  him  in 
all  that  was  not  mere  language  and  fashion  of  the 
time. 

I  trust  it  will  not  be  thought  superfluous  to  attempt 
a  definition  of  what  we  ought  to  look  for  in  judging 
dramatic  literature.  Dry  den,  whose  example  cannot 
well  be  followed  too  closely  in  criticism,  acknowledges 
the  need  for  a  definition  of  a  play  early  in  his  Essay 
of  Dramatic  Poesy.  Lisideius,  one  of  the  interlocutors 
in  the  conversation,  gives  this,  with  the  proviso  that  it 
is  rather  a  description  than  a  definition  :  "  A  just  and 
tu  dramatic  lively  image  of  human  nature,  representing 
quality.  fts  passions  and  humours,  and  the  changes 

of  fortune  to  which  it  is  subject,  for  the  delight  and 
instruction  of  mankind."  Now  this  is  neither  defini- 
tion nor  description  of  a  play.  There  is  not  a  word  in 
it  which  does  not  apply  to  Gil  Bias.  Dryden  was 
himself  well  aware  of  its  insufficiency,  for  he  makes 
Crites  raise  "  a  logical  objection  against  it " — that  it  is 
"  only  a  genere  et  fi?ie,  and  so  not  altogether  perfect." 
Yet  he  leaves  the  matter  standing  there.  That  he, 
who  was  himself  a  playwright,  should  have  been  con- 
tent to  do  this  when  dealing  with  the  drama  is  one 
proof  how  much  English  literature  had  lost  "  the  sense 
of  the  theatre."  If  Lisideius  had  not  been  thinking  of 
literature,  but  of  literature  as  adapted  to  the  stage,  he 
Avould  have  said  (but  in  Dryden's  incomparably  better 


228      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

way)  something  like  this :  "  A  play  is  an  action,  put 
before  an  audience  by  dialogue  and  representation, 
forming  a  coherent  whole,  in  which  all  the  parts  sub- 
serve a  general  purpose,  and  are  dramatically  good 
only  in  so  far  as  they  do."  Lyric  beauty,  good  moral 
reflection,  vigorous  deliveries  of  human  nature,  are, 
however  good  in  themselves,  as  little  able  to  make  a 
good  play  as  the  most  beautiful  ornament  is  to  make 
a  fine  building. 

It  is  the  unity  of  the  action  which  constitutes  the 

good  play,  and  it  may  be  obtained  by  different  methods. 

A  dramatist  may  obtain  unity  by  means  of  the  passion 

or  by  the  working  out  of  a  single  situation.     Of  the 

great  Greek  dramatists  I  cannot  speak  with  expert 

authority,  but  as  far  as  they  are  visible  in  translations 

as  in  a  glass  darkly,  they  appear  to  have  achieved 

unity  in  this  way  to  the  full.     The  chorus, 

Spanish,        which  in  inferior  hands   offers  irresistible 

and  French    temptations    for    wandering    talk,   always 

drama.  5  .  ,.,         ,  . 

carries  on  the  action,  while  what  we  see  is 
the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  some  terrible  force 
working  behind.  This  ever-present  sense  of  the  some- 
thing reserved  driving  before  it  what  we  are  allowed 
to  see,  with  an  undeviating  directness  of  aim,  gives 
by  itself  an  awful  unity  of  interest  to  the  tragedy. 
The  Spanish  dramatist  gains  his  unity  by  artful  con- 
struction of  his  story,  and  by  subordinating  passion 
and  character  to  the  mere  action.  The  French  stage 
in  its  great  days  aimed  at  using  the  same  resources  as 
the  Greek,  though  with  certain  mechanical  changes, 
such  as  the  dropping  of  the  chorus,  and  the  division  of 


THE   EARLIER   DRAMATISTS.  229 

its  work  among  the  personages,  which  in  itself  was  no 
great  gain. 

Our  own  drama  adopted  neither  device.  It  neither 
concentrated  its  attention  on  the  one  situation  or 
unit  >i  of  the  passion,  nor  did  it  subordinate  all  to  the 
English  piay.  march  of  an  action.  There  remained  to  it 
to  do  this — to  secure  unity  by  giving  to  the  play  the 
unity  of  life  itself — by  showing  us  human  nature  work- 
ing in  all  its  manifestations,  of  love  and  hate,  heroism 
and  cowardice,  laughter  and  tears.  Every  rule  suffers 
exceptions.  There  are  many  pure  comedies  in  our 
dramatic  literature,  while  Ben  Jonson  showed  at  least 
a  strong  leaning  to  accept  the  unnecessary  unities  of 
time  and  place  in  order  to  attain  more  effectually  the 
indispensable  unity  of  action.  Yet  the  distinguishing 
feature  of  our  great  dramatic  literature  on  its  construc- 
tive side  is  that  it  threw  tragedy  and  comedy  together, 
and  that  it  relied  for  its  unity  on  an  inner  binding 
force  of  life.  This  is  the  greatest  skill  of  all,  but  it  is 
for  that  very  reason  the  most  difficult  of  attainment. 
It  presupposes  in  the  dramatist  a  sympathy  with  all 
humanity  from  Lear  to  Parolles,  and  with  that  a  power 
of  creation  and  construction  incomparably  greater  than 
is  needed  to  build  by  the  classic  rules,  or  to  put  together 
an  artful  story  worked  out  by  stock-figures  on  the 
Spanish  model.  Its  dangers  are  obvious.  When  the 
dramatist  had  no  natural  tragic  power  he  would  be  in 
constant  peril  of  falling  into  fustian.  When  he  was 
deficient  in  a  sense  of  humour,  he  would  be  tempted 
to  fall  back  for  his  comedy  on  mere  grossness.  His 
action,  being  free  to  wander  in  time  and  space,  would 


230      EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER    RENAISSANCE. 

have  a  constant  tendency  to  straggle,  and  the  play 
would  become  a  mere  succession  of  scenes  following 
one  another  "like  geese  on  a  common."  The  strict 
following  of  the  classic  rules,  which  work  for  concen- 
tration, helps  to  preserve  the  dramatist  from  these 
errors,  at  the  cost  of  limiting  his  freedom.  To  Shake- 
speare they  would  have  been  a  slavery,  but  it  is  not 
certain  that  they  would  not  have  been  a  support  to 
Marlowe  or  Middleton,  who  stood  much  less  in  need 
of  freedom  than  of  discipline  and  direction.  So  while 
feeling  duly  thankful  for  that  resistance  to  the 
authority  of  the  classics  which  helped  to  give  us 
Shakespeare,  we  may  remember  that  it  also  helped  to 
give  us  many  comic  scenes  which  it  is  hardly  possible 
to  read  without  feeling  ashamed  for  the  men  who 
wrote  them,  and  many  so-called  plays  which  are  only 
shapeless  combinations  of  scenes,  bound  together  by 
no  other  nexus  than  thread  and  paper. 

Ralph  Roister  Doister,  the  earliest  known  English 
comedy,  was  written  apparently  about  1530,  and 
Ralph  Roister  printed  some  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  later. 
Doistcr.  The  date  of  the  printing  of  a  play  is  notori- 

ously no  test  of  its  date  of  composition  or  acting,  but 
only  of  the  time  when  the  actors  had  no  further  motive 
for  keeping  it  in  their  own  hands  in  manuscript — that 
is,  when  it  ceased  to  be  popular  on  the  stage.  Ralph 
Roister  Doistcr  was  the  work  of  Nicholas  Udall,  head- 
master of  Eton  and  Westminster,  and  is  full  of  remin- 
iscences of  Plautus.  Ealph  Koister  Doister  himself 
is  our  old  friend  the  miles  gloriosvs  adapted  to  the 
conditions  of  London  life  in  the  time  of  Edward  VI, 


THE    EARLIER    DRAMATISTS.  231 

Matthew  Merrygreek,  described  as  a  "  needy  humor- 
ist/' is  our  no  less  familiar  friend  the  parasite.  Merry- 
greek  feeds  on  the  vanity  and  credulity  of  Ealph 
Koister  Doister,  who  is  made  up  of  conceit,  bluster, 
and  cowardice — who  thinks  that  every  woman  who 
sees  him  falls  in  love  with  him,  and  is  of  course 
baffled  and  beaten  in  the  end.  It  is  written  in  suffi- 
ciently brisk  lines  of  no  great  regularity;  and  there 
are  much  duller  plays.  Ralph's  courtship  of  Dame 
Christian  Custance,  who  will  have  none  of  him,  is 
lively.  On  the  whole,  the  play  leaves  the  impression 
that  Udall  was  more  than  a  mere  imitator  of  Plautus, 
but  it  is  only  the  school  exercise  of  a  clever  man.1 

"  The  right  pithy,  pleasant,  and  merry  comedy, 
entitled  Gammer  Gurtons  Needle"  is  believed,  on  good 
Gammer  gut-  evidence,  to  have  been  written  by  John 
ton's  Needle.  gtiil  (1543  ?-1608),  a  churchman,  who  died 
Bishop  of  Bath  and  "Wells.  It  was  played  at  his 
college,  Christ's,  Cambridge,  in  1566,  but  may  have 
been  written  three  years  earlier.  However  that  may 
be,  it  was  certainly  written  in  his  youth.  Nothing 
could  well  be  less  academic  or  clerical.  Though 
divided  into  five  acts,  it  is,  in  fact,  a  farce  not  unlike 
much  mediaeval  French  comedy.  The  plot  is  one  of 
a  familiar  class  which  will  always  hold  the  stage  under 
new  forms,  and  the  working  out  is  of  the  simplest. 
Gammer  Gurton  loses  her  needle,  and  then  finds  it, 
just  where  she  ought  to  have  looked  for  it,  after  up- 
setting the  house  by  searching  in  unlikely  places,  and 
disturbing    the    village   by    unjustly   suspecting    her 

1  Dodsley's  Old  Plays.     Edited  by  W.  Carew  Hazlitt.     Vol.  iii. 


232      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

neighbours  of  theft.  It  is  unquestionably  too  long, 
but  it  is  very  far  from  dull.  There  is  a  directness  of 
purpose  in  Still  which  is  decidedly  dramatic,  and  with 
it  a  power  of  characterisation  by  no  means  contempt- 
ible. All  the  personages,  and  notably  the  wandering 
beggar,  Deccon  the  Bedlam,  have  a  marked  truth  to 
humble  human  nature.  They  are  coarse,  but  not  wil- 
fully and  unnecessarily  coarse.  There  are  none  of 
those  strings  of  mere  nasty  words  and  images  which 
serve  as  foil  to  the  poetry  of  the  true  Elizabethan 
comedy.  Still  is  honestly  naturalistic,  neither  toning 
down  the  truth  of  the  rough  talk  of  rude  people,  nor 
lavishing  bad  language  from  an  apparent  wish  to 
startle.  If  he  had  not  entered  the  Church,  which 
made  it  indecent  for  him  to  work  for  the  stage,  he 
might  have  given  us  a  series  of  spirited  naturalistic 
comedies.  As  it  is,  Gammer  Chirton's  Needle  stands 
alone.  The  facts  that  it  contains  the  capital  drinking- 
song,  "  Back  and  side  go  bare,  go  bare,"  and  that  it  is 
written  in  the  prevailing  seven-foot  metre,  are  all  that 
connect  it  with  the  later  comedy.1 

We  have  seen  that  the  Latin  comedy  had  much  to 
do  with  Ralph  Roister  Doister.  The  Latin  tragedy  is 
directly  responsible  for  a  much  more  ambitious  effort, 
the  play  variously  named  Gorhoduc,  or 
Ferrex  and  Porrex,  generally  attributed  to 
Sir  Thomas  Sackville,  afterwards  Lord  Buckhurst, 
though  a  claim  is  made  for  the  part-authorship  at 
least  of  Thomas  Norton.  If  it  had  been  the  in- 
tention of  the  author  to  establish  a  prejudice  against 

1  Podsley's  Old  Plays.     Edited  l>y  W,  Carew  Hazlitt.     Vol.  iii. 


THE   EARLIER   DRAMATISTS.  233 

the  regular  tragedy  in  the  minds  of  his  audience, 
he  could  hardly  have  done  better  than  write  this 
painfully  dull  play.  The  very  metre,  which  is  the 
heroic  couplet,  moves  by  jerky  steps  of  the  same 
length,  and  is  inexpressibly  wooden.  Nor  is  that  by 
any  means  all.  Gorbocluc  has  all  the  faults  and  none 
of  the  possible  merits  of  its  kind.  The  "regular" 
tragedy  on  the  classic  model  needs  the  concentration 
of  the  interest  on  one  strong  situation.  But  Gorbocluc 
is  a  long  story  of  how  the  king  of  that  name  divides 
his  kingdom  between  his  sons ;  how  they  quarrel,  and 
one  kills  the  other ;  how  the  mother  slays  the  slayer ; 
how  the  people  kill  her  and  her  husband,  and  are 
then  killed  by  the  nobles.  It  is  all  told  in  speeches 
of  cruel  length,  and  is  necessarily  full  of  repetitions. 
A  very  curious  feature  of  the  play  is  the  insertion 
between  the  acts  of  dumb  shows  intended  to  enforce 
the  excellence  of  union,  the  evils  of  flattery  or  of 
anarchy,  which  have  a  decided  flavour  of  the  morality. 
The  Induction  to  The  Mirror  of  Magistrates  and  The 
Complaint  of  Buckingham  remain  to  show  that  Sir 
T.  Sackville  was  a  poet;  but  Gorboduc  is  the  very 
ample  proof  that  he  was  no  dramatist.  The  play, 
which  one  thinks  must  have  bored  her  extremely, 
was  given  before  the  queen  by  the  gentlemen  of  the 
Inner  Temple  in  1561. 2 

The  suspension — not,  indeed,  of  activity  but  of 
growth — in  literature  which  marks  the  first  years  of 
the  queen's  reign  was  as  marked  in  drama  as  in  pure 
poetry.     Udall,   Still,   and    Sir  T.    Sackville   had   no 

i  Dodsley's  Old  Plays,  1825. 


234      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

following  to  speak  of,  and  it  was  not  until  a  now 
generation  had  grown  up  that  the  first  signs  of  the 
real  Elizabethan  drama  became  visible.  The  produc- 
tion of  pieces  for  the  theatre  did  not  cease,  but  they 
belong  to  the  past  not  to  the  coming  time.  The  taste 
for  shows  was  strong,  and  it  was  served.  But  the 
pieces  of  this  interval  are  the  descendants  of  the 
morality,  not  the  ancestors  of  Shakespeare's  drama. 
We  can  leave  them  aside,  for  they  had  no  following. 
There  is  no  Auto  Sacramental  in  English  literature. 
Formation  of  Before  that  could  come  it  was  first  neces- 
the  theatre.  sarv  t0  have  a  theatre,  in  the  sense  of  a 
place  of  public  amusement,  managed  by  professional 
actors,  and  not  only  an  occasional  stage  on  which 
corporations  and  societies  performed  from  time  to 
time.  The  formation  of  the  theatre  in  the  material 
sense  was  the  work  of  these  earlier  years ;  but  this, 
which  is,  moreover,  very  obscure,  does  not  belong 
properly  to  the  history  of  literature.  It  is  enough  to 
note  that  a  body  of  men  working  together  did  here 
what  Lope  de  Eueda  did  in  Spain.  A  class  of  actors 
was  formed.  Like  him,  they  often  wrote  themselves. 
In  both  countries  the  theatre  was  thoroughly  popular, 
which  was  not,  it  may  be,  altogether  an  advantage. 
At  least  the  fact  that  the  same  man  might  be  manager 
of  a  theatre  and  keeper  of  a  bear-garden — as  Alleyn 
was — points  to  the  existence  of  influences  which  did 
not  visibly  work  for  the  production  of  good  literature 
in  the  theatre.  In  England,  as  in  Spain,  much  was 
inevitably  written  to  please  what  may  be  called  the 
bear-garden  element  of  the  audience.     In  Spain  this 


THE   EARLIER   DRAMATISTS.  235 

tended  to  separate  itself  into  the  pasos,  mojigangas, 
entremcses,  dances,  and  so  forth,  which  were  given 
between  the  three  jornadas  of  the  comedia.  With  ns 
all  was  thrown  into  the  five  acts  of  the  play,  and  this 
difference  in  mechanical  arrangement  was  not  without 
its  influence  on  literary  form.     . 

The  flowering  of  the  Elizabethan  drama  dates  from 
the  middle  years  of  the  queen's  reign.  By  this  time 
the  theatre  was  formed,  and  the  taste  for  it  was  strong. 
It  naturally  attracted  many  writers,  if  only  because 
it  was  the  most  direct  and  effective  way  in  which 
they  could  make  themselves  heard,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  fact  that  it  was  by  far  the  most  certainly  lucrative 
of  all  forms  of  literature,  and  therefore  had  an  intelli- 
gible attraction  for  all  who  lived  by  their  pens.  Among 
them  it  was  inevitable  that  there  should  be  not  a  few 
who  had  no  natural  faculty  for  dramatic  literature — 
Lodge,  for  instance,  and  Nash.  Both  lived  much 
about  the  theatre,  and  their  relations  with  it,  and  the 
writers  for  it,  figure  largely  in  the  gossiping  pamphlets 
of  the  time.  But  they  wrote  for  it  only  by  necessity 
or  accident,  and  their  dramatic  work  is  altogether 
subordinate.  As  much  might  be  not  unfairly  said  of 
John  Lyly ;  but  his  plays  are  so  curious,  and  held  so 
considerable  a  place  in  the  estimation  of  his  time,  that 
he  cannot  be  put  wholly  aside. 

Custom  has  ruled  that  the  name  of  Lyly  shall  be 
followed  by  the  words  "  the  author  of  JShiphues"  Cus- 
tom has  in  this  case  decided  rightly.  Lyly 
was  always  the  author  of  Ewphues.  This 
didactic  tale  falls  to  be  discussed  with  the  prose  of  the 


236      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

time,  but  we  may  note  that  it  is  composed  of  a  very 
slight  framework  of  story,  from  which  blow  out  clouds 
of  words  arranged  in  quaint  and  not  inelegant  patterns. 
No  drama  can  be  made  out  of  such  materials,  and, 
properly  speaking,  the  plays  of  Lyly  are  not  dramatic.1 
Unlike  most  of  his  contemporaries,  he  was  attached  to 
the  Court,  though,  according  to  his  own  melancholy 
summing-up  of  the  results  of  his  labours,  he  obtained 
nothing  as  a  reward.  He  was  born  in  Kent  about 
1554,  and  was  educated  at  Oxford.  It  may  be  that  he 
went  on  to  Cambridge,  according  to  what  was  then  a 
common  custom.  So  little  is  known  of  the  rest  of  his 
life  that  biographers  have  been  driven  to  make  matter 
by  identifying  him  with  a  certain  Mr  Lilly,  a  bold, 
witty  atheist,  who  harassed  Hall  in  his  first  living, 
and  whose  sudden  death  from  the  plague  is  recorded  by 
the  satirist  and  future  Bishop  of  Norwich,  with  pious 
satisfaction,  among  the  various  examples  of  divine  in- 
tervention on  his  own  behalf.  If  he  sat  in  several  Par- 
liaments, Lyly  cannot  have  altogether  wanted  means 
and  friends.  He  may  have  lived  into  the  reign  of  James 
L,  and  died  in  1606.  His  plays  were  part  of  his 
service  as  a  courtier.  They  were  not  written  for  the 
vulgar  theatre,  but  to  be  performed  by  the  "  children 
of  Paul's "  or  "  of  the  Queen's  Chapel "  before  the 
queen  at  the  New  Year  feasts.  Here  he  would  have 
an  audience  which  already  admired  his  Euphucs, 
published  in  1580,  and  was  well  content  to  hear  him 
"  parle  Euphuism."  To  this  we  may  partly  attribute 
the  fact  that,  while  his  contemporaries  were  making 

1  Dramatic  Works  of  John  Lyly.     Edited  by  F.  W.  Fairholt,  1858. 


THE    EARLIER    DRAMATISTS.  237 

blank  verse  the  vehicle  of  the  higher  English  drama, 
he  showed  a  marked  preference  for  the  use  of  prose, 
and  also  for  mythological  and  classical  subjects. 
The  names  of  his  undoubted  plays  are  Alexander  and 
Campaspe ;  Sapho  and  Phao  ;  Bndimion,  or  The  Man 
in  the  Moon ;  Gallathea  ;  Mydas  ;  Mother  Bomhie ;  Tlie 
Woman  in  the  Moon  ;  and  Love's  Metamorphosis.  They 
were  written  between  1584  and  the  end  of  the  century. 
Lyly,  as  has  been  said,  was  no  dramatist.  His  plays 
do  not  advance  in  any  coherent  story.  They  rotate  or 
straggle.  When,  as  in  Mother  Bombie,  he  did  attempt 
to  construct  a  comedy  of  intrigue,  the  result  is  mere 
confusion.  The  faults  of  his  style  have  been  made 
familiar  to  all  the  world  by  Falstaff  s  immortal  address 
to  Prince  Hal :  "  For  though  the  camomile,  the  more 
it  is  trodden  on  the  faster  it  grows,  yet  youth,  the 
more  it  is  wasted  the  sooner  it  wears.  .  .  .  There 
is  a  thing,  Harry,  which  thou  hast  often  heard  of,  and 
it  is  known  to  many  in  our  land  by  the  name  of  pitch : 
this  pitch,  as  ancient  writers  do  report,  doth  defile," 
and  so  on.  The  antitheses  work  with  the  regularity 
of  pistons;  there  is  a  steady  march  past  of  similes, 
drawn  as  often  as  not  from  a  natural  history  worthy 
of  Sir  John  Mandeville,  and  arranged  in  twos  or 
threes.  His  humour  is  of  the  kind  which  makes  a 
reader  imitate  the  example  of  Sancho  when  he  saw  his 
master  cutting  capers  in  his  shirt  on  the  slope  of  the 
Sierra  Morena — retire  in  order  to  escape  the  spectacle 
of  a  good  gentleman  making  an  exhibition  of  himself. 
Yet  in  his  grave  and  poetic  moments  there  is  a  prim 
charm  about  Lyly,  and  a  frosty  moonlight  glitter  which 


238      EUROPEAN    LFTEBATURI — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

is  attractive.      His   snatches  of  song  are  among   the 
best  in  an  age  of  lyric  poetry. 

Lyric  poet  tempted  or  driven  by  necessity  on  to  the 
stage  is  the  description  which  must  be  given  of  two  of 
his  contemporaries,  who  in  other  respects 
differed  from  him  very  widely  —  Robert 
Greene  and  George  Peele.  If  we  are  bound  to  take 
his  own  confessions,  and  the  abuse  poured  on  his 
grave  by  that  bad -blooded  pedant  Gabriel  Harvey, 
quite  seriously,  we  are  compelled  to  believe  that 
Greene  ended  a  thoroughly  despicable  life  by  a  very 
sordid  death.  But  a  little  wholesome  scepticism  may 
well  be  applied  both  to  Greene's  deathbed  repentance 
and  to  the  abuse  of  his  implacable  enemy.  There  was 
in  the  Elizabethan  time  a  taste  for  a  rather  maunder- 
ing morality,  and  for  a  loud-mouthed  scolding  style  of 
abuse.  The  pamphleteers  talked  a  great  deal  about 
themselves,  and  conducted  wit  combats,  which  were 
redolent  of  the  bear-garden  and  backsword  combats.  La 
Rochefoucauld's  observation,  that  there  are  men  who 
would  rather  speak  evil  of  themselves  than  not  speak  of 
themselves  at  all,  may  also  be  kept  in  mind.  A  weak, 
conceited,  self-indulgent  man,  with  a  genuine  vein  of 
lyric  poetry  and  of  tenderness,  is  perhaps  as  accurate 
a  summing  up  as  can  be  given  of  Greene.  He  was 
born  in  1560  and  died  in  1592,  worn  out  by  a 
Bohemian  life  led  in  a  very  exuberant  time.  There 
seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  the  end  was  very  miserable. 
Greene  has  enjoyed  an  unfortunate  notoriety  on  the 
strength  of  a  passage  in  his  last  pamphlet,  The  Groat's 
Worth   of    Wit,   in   which    he    abuses    Shakespeare. 


THE   EARLIER   DRAMATISTS.  239 

Everybody  has  heard  of  the  "  only  Shake-scene  in  the 
country,"  the  player  adorned  with  the  feathers  of 
Greene  himself  and  other  real  poets.  Historically  it 
is  of  some  value  as  proving  that  Shakespeare  was 
known  and  prosperous  in  1592.  It  also  helps  to  give 
the  measure  of  Greene,  that  while  he  was  affecting  for 
the  press  all  the  agony  of  a  deathbed  repentance — 
partly  no  doubt  sincere  enough — and  was  exhorting 
his  friends  to  flee  destruction,  he  could  break  out,  with 
all  the  venom  of  wounded  vanity,  against  the  man 
who  had  succeeded  where  he  himself  had  failed.  If 
we  had  the  good  fortune  to  know  nothing  of  the  life 
of  Greene,  he  would  rank  as  a  respectable  writer  who 
had  a  share  in  a  time  of  preparation  for  a  far  greater 
than  himself  or  any  of  his  associates.  His  prose  stories 
— largely  adapted  from  the  Italian — include  one,  Pan- 
closto,  which  had  the  honour  in  its  turn  to  be  adapted 
and  made  into  poetic  drama  by  Shakespeare  in  The 
Winter's  Tale.  His  undoubted  work  for  the  stage 
which  survives  was  all  published  after  his  death  with 
bad  or  little  editing.  The  first  printed,  Orlando  Furioso, 
taken  from  a  passage  in  Ariosto,  is  hopelessly  cor- 
rupt. The  others  are — A  Looking -Glass  for  London 
and  England;  Friar  Bacon  and  Friar  Bungay;  Scottish 
Story  of  James  TV.;  the  Comical  History  of  Alphonsus, 
King  of  Aragon;  and  the  doubtful  George-a-Green,  the 
Pinner  of  Wakefield}  With  Greene  we  come  to  some- 
thing at  once  very  different  from  Lyly,  and  quite  new, — 
to  the  vehement  exuberant  Elizabethan  drama,  which 
in  strong  hands  reaches  the  loftiest  heights  of  poetry 

1  Dramatic  Works  of  Robert  Greene.     Dyce,  1883. 


240      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

and  passion,  but  in  others  falls  to  the  lowest  depths 
of  rant,  or  runs  to  the  very  madness  of  fustian.  It  is 
not  the  greater  achievement  that  we  must  look  for  in 
Greene.  His  heroics  are  "  comical,"  in  a  sense  not 
designed  by  the  printer  of  Alphonsits.  Drawcansir 
is  hardly  an  exaggeration  of  that  hero,  and  is  incom- 
parably more  coherent.  His  comic  scenes  have  too 
commonly  the  air  of  mere  hack  work  put  in  to  supply 
parts  for  the  clowns  of  the  theatre,  while  his  plots  are 
mere  successions  of  events  frequently  unconnected 
with  one  another.  But  in  the  midst  of  all  is  the 
undeniable  vein  of  tenderness  and  lyric  poetry.  All 
the  scenes  in  his  best  play,  Friar  Bacon  and  Friar 
Bungay,  in  which  Margaret  the  Fair  Maid  of  Fressing- 
field  is  introduced,  are  charmingly  fresh  and  natural. 
With  more  discipline,  and  no  temptation  to  serve  the 
taste  of  the  time  for  King  Cambyses'  vein,  Greene 
might  have  been  the  author  of  pleasant  little  plays 
of  a  poetic  sentimental  order  written  in  a  charming 
simple  style. 

His  contemporary  George  Peele  was  slightly  the  older 
man,  and  outlived  Greene  a  very  few  years.  He  was 
born  about  1558,  and  was  dead  by  1598,  in  a 
very  sordid  way.  Of  his  life  very  little  is 
known  except  that  he  was  the  son  of  the  "  clerk  "  of 
Christ's  Hospital,  that  he  was  educated  at  Broadgates 
Hall,  now  Pembroke  College,  Oxford,  and  that  he  was 
a  thorough  Bohemian.  His  reputation  in  this  respect 
was  so  solidly  founded  that  he  was  made  the  hero  of 
a  book  of  "jests,"  which,  in  fact,  are  tales  of  roguery 
mostly  reprinted  from  older  French  originals.     Peele 


THE   EAKLIEE   DRAMATISTS.  241 

worked  regularly  for  a  company  of  actors,  and  no 
doubt  did  much  which  cannot  now  be  traced.  Com- 
mentators, who  have  striven  hard  to  prove  the  un- 
provable in  the  history  of  the  Elizabethan  Drama,  have 
assigned  him  portions  of  the  First  and  Second  Parts 
of  Henry  VI}  His  undoubted  plays  are  —  The 
Arraignment  of  Paris,  The  famous  Chronicle  of  King 
Edward  I.,  The  Battle  of  Alcazar,  The  Old  Wives'  Tale, 
and  David  and  Fair  Bethsabe.  To  these  may  be  added 
Sir  Clyomon  and  Sir  Clamydes,  which  is  written 
in  the  old  seven -foot  metre,  and  differs  from  the 
others  greatly.  But  custom  has  assigned  it  to  Peele, 
who  indeed  uses  the  long  line  elsewhere.  Peele  was 
a  decidedly  stronger  man  than  Greene,  but  a  writer 
of  the  same  stamp  and  limitations.  What  is  best  in 
him  is  the  lyric  note  and  the  tenderness.  The  first 
is  well  shown  in  not  a  few  passages  of  the  Arraign- 
ment of  Paris,  a  somewhat  overgrown  masque,  written 
for  the  Court  and  to  flatter  Elizabeth ;  and  the  second 
in  the  David  and  Bethsabe.  His  chronicle  play, 
Bdtvard  L,  has  a  certain  historical  value  as  illustrat- 
ing the  growth  of  the  class,  and  it  is  notorious  for  the 
hideous  libel  it  contains  on  the  character  of  Eleanor 
of  Castile ;  while  The  Battle  of  Alcazar  is  interesting 
in  another  way,  as  an  example  of  the  boyish  "  blood 
and  thunder"  popular  at  the  time,  of  which  Mar- 
lowe's Tamburlainc  is  the  masterpiece.  It  is  the 
equivalent  to  Greene's  Alphonsus;  but  if  not  more 
sane  it  is  more  substantial,  and  does  really  contain 

1  Dramatic  WorTcs  of  George  Peele.     Dyce,  1883. 
Q 


242      EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

lines  which  are  poetry  and  not  rant,  though  the  rant 
is  there  in  profusion. 

Thomas  Kyd  need  hardly  be  mentioned  here  except 
for  the  purpose  of  leading  on  to  the  master  of  the 
school,  Marlowe.  He  is  a  very  shadowy 
figure,  who  may  have  been  born  in  1557, 
and  may  have  died  in  1595.  His  voice  is  still  audible 
in  The  Spanish  Tragedy,  and  perhaps  in  Jcronimo. 
The  first-named  is  a  continuation  of  the  second — if 
the  second  were  not  written  to  supply  an  introduction 
to  the  first.  They  too  are  "  blood  and  thunder,"  with 
the  occasional  flash  of  real  poetry,  which  is  found 
wellnigh  everywhere  in  that  wondrous  time. 

Greene,  Peele,  and  Kyd,  in  spite  of  the  independent 
merit  of  parts  of  their  work,  are  mainly  interesting 
because  they  were  forerunners  of  Shakespeare,  and 
aided  in  the  formation  of  the  English  drama.  If  it 
had  wanted  Friar  Bacon  and  Friar  Bungay,  or  David 
and  Bethsabe,  it  would  no  doubt  have  been  the  poorer, 
but  by  things  not  great  in  themselves,  and  still  less 
indispensable.  If  it  had  wanted  the  author  of  Doctor 
Faustus,  it  would  have  been  the  poorer  by  a  very 
great  poet.    Christopher  Marlowe  was  born 

Marlowe. 

in  1564,  in  the  same  year  as  Shakespeare 
and  was  the  son  of  a  shoemaker.  Probably  by  the 
help  of  patrons  he  was  educated  at  the  grammar- 
school  of  the  town,  and  went  from  it  to  Corpus 
Christi  College  at  Cambridge.  The  other  events  of 
his  life  are  mainly  matter  of  guesswork  till  we  come 
to  the  fact  that  he  was  stabbed  in  a  tavern  brawl  at 
Deptford  on  the  1st  June  1593.     He  was  accused  of 


THE   BARTJTBft    DRAMATISTS.  243 

exceeding  even  the  large  Bohemian  licence  of  life  of 
his  contemporaries,  and  of  atheism.  The  evidence  is 
neither  direct  nor  good,  but  it  is  certain  that  a  warrant 
for  his  arrest,  and  that  of  several  of  his  friends,  on  the 
charge  of  disseminating  irreligious  opinions,  was  issued 
by  the  Privy  Council  about  a  fortnight  before  he  was 
killed.  At  a  time  when  all  the  once  accepted  founda- 
tions of  religion  were  being  called  in  question,  sheer 
denial  was  naturally  not  unknown.  Given  the  vehe- 
ment spirit  of  all  his  work,  it  is  as  probable  that 
Marlowe  went  this  length  as  that  he  stopped  short  of 
it.  The  truth  is  in  this  case  of  little  importance,  for 
Marlowe's  place  is  among  the  poets,  not  the  contro- 
versialists, of  the  sixteenth  century. 

As  a  poet  Marlowe  stands  immediately  below  Spenser 
and  Shakespeare,  but  between  them  and  every  other 
contemporary.  He  fails  to  rank  with  them  because  he 
wanted  their  range,  and  also  because  there  was  some- 
thing in  him  not  only  unbridled,  but  incapable  of  sub- 
mitting to  order  and  measure.  For  a  moment,  and 
from  time  to  time,  he  shoots  up  to  the  utmost  height 
of  poetry,  but  only  in  a  beam  of  light,  which  lasts  for 
a  very  brief  space  and  then  sinks  out  of  view.  In 
these  happy  passages  of  inspiration  lie  showed  what 
could  be  done  with  English  blank  verse.  It  had  been 
written  before  him,  since  it  was  first  used  by  Surrey 
in  his  translation  of  the  ^Eneid,  but  Marlowe  was  its 
real  creator  as  an  instrument  of  English  poetry.  This 
was  his  great  achievement.  His  fragment  of  Hero  and 
Zeander,  though  a  beautiful  poem  of  the  mythological 
and  rather  lascivious  order  popular  at  the  time,  and 


244      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

full  of  a  most  passionate  love  of  beauty,  nowhere  at- 
tains to  the  height  of  the  constantly  quoted  "  purple 
patches  "  from  the  first  part  of  Tamlurlaine,  from  Dr 
Faustus,  or  from  The  Jew  of  Malta.  In  themselves 
they  are  unsurpassable,  yet  his  plays  cannot  by  any 
possible  stretch  of  charity  be  called  good.  What  we 
remember  of  them  is  always  the  passage  of  poetry,  ex- 
pressing in  the  most  magnificent  language  some  ex- 
treme passion  of  ambition,  greed,  fear,  or  grasping 
arrogance,  or  some  sheer  revel  of  delight  in  the  splen- 
dour of  jewels  and  the  possibilities  of  wealth.  There 
are  few  scenes,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word,  and 
there  is  much  monotonous  repetition.  The  second 
part  of  Tamburlaine  is  the  same  thing  over  and 
over.  The  first  two  acts  of  The  Jew  of  Malta  promise 
well,  and  then  the  play  falls  off  into  incoherence  and 
absurdity.  Marlowe,  though  an  incomparably  greater 
man,  seems  to  have  been  as  blind  as  Greene  or  Peele 
ever  were  to  what  is  meant  by  consistency.  His  Bar- 
abas,  for  instance,  who  is  represented  as  a  wicked  able 
man,  is  suddenly  found  putting  his  neck  in  the  power 
of  a  new-bought  slave  in  a  fashion  hardly  conceivable 
in  the  case  of  a  mere  fool.  Dr  Faustus  holds  together 
no  better  than  Barabas.  There  is  something  more 
astonishing  still.  A  poet  may  be  able  to  express 
passion  in  splendid  verse,  and  yet  be  able  neither  to 
construct  a  story  nor  create  a  character,  but  we  do  not 
expect  to  find  him  dropping  into  what,  as  mere  lan- 
guage, is  childishly  inept.  Now  that  is  what  Marlowe 
did.  The  difference  is  not  that  between  Wordsworth 
at  his  best  and  his  worst.     It  is  the  difference  between 


THE   EARLIER   DRAMATISTS.  245 

Dryden  and  the  bellman's  verses — between  poetry  and 
rank  fustian,  or  commonplace.  His  short  life,  and  the 
conditions  in  which  it  was  passed,  made  it  inevitable 
that  the  bulk  of  Marlowe's  work  should  be  but  little. 
Tamourlaine,  Faustus,  The  Jew  of  Malta,  Edward  II, 
and  The, Massacre  of  Paris  sum  up  the  list  of  the  plays 
which  we  can  be  sure  were  wholly  his.  The  Tragedy  of 
Dido  was  written  in  collaboration  with  Nash.  Beyond 
this  there  is  a  supposition,  supported  by  greater  or 
less  probability,  that  he  had  a  share  in  Lust's  Dominion 
and  in  Titus  Andronicus  and  Henry  VI.  To  the  plays 
are  to  be  added  the  fragment  of  Hero  and  Leander,  The 
Passionate  Shepherd,  and  the  translations  from  Ovid 
written  in  his  earlier  days.1 

If  the  question  is  asked  what  this  body  of  poets 
had  done  to  advance  the  development  of  the  Eng- 
charactero/  nsn  drama,  the  answer  must  be  that  they 
these  writers,  fr^  ^one  something  to  improve  its  lan- 
guage. More  can  hardly  be  claimed  for  them.  They 
certainly  give  no  example  of  how  to  construct  a 
dramatic  story,  nor  did  they  create  a  consistent 
interesting  character,  unless  Greene's  Fair  Margaret 
be  allowed  as  an  exception.  That  you  did  very  well 
as  long  as  you  took  care  that  something  happened, 
whether  it  was  what  the  personage  would  have  done, 
or  what  would  follow  from  what  went  before,  or  not, 
was  apparently  an  accepted  rule  with  all  of  them.  It 
was  somewhat  strange  that  it  should  have  been  so,  for 
all  were  educated  men,  and  were  deeply  conscious 
of   their  learning.      Even  if  they  did  not  take  the 

1  Works  of  Christopher  Marlowe.     Dyce,  1865. 


246      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

classic  model,  which,  as  they  were  all  far  better 
qualified  to  write  a  chorus  than  to  construct  a  plot, 
it  would  have  been  to  their  advantage  to  do,  they 
might  have  learnt,  without  going  beyond  Horace,  to 
avoid  their  grosser  faults.  It  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  none  of  their  surviving  plays  were  published 
in  favourable  circumstances.  All  may  have  been, 
and  some  certainly  were,  subject  to  manipulation 
while  in  the  hands  of  the  actors.  But  even  when 
allowance  is  made  for  this,  it  is  undeniable  that  the 
writers  of  the  school  of  Marlowe,  to  use  a  not  very  ac- 
curate but  convenient  expression,  were  totally  wanting 
in  any  sense  of  proportion.  To  judge  by  much  that 
they  were  content  to  write,  they  cannot  have  known 
the  difference  between  good  and  bad.  The  incoherent 
movement  of  their  plays  was  perhaps  partly  due  to 
the  want  of  scenery.  When  the  audience  would  take 
a  curtain  for  Syracuse,  they  would  also  take  it  for 
Ephesus  or  for  twenty  different  places,  indoors  and 
out,  in  one  act.  There  was,  therefore,  no  check  on 
the  playwright,  who  could  move  with  all  the  licence 
of  the  story-teller.  But  then  they  did  not  give  their 
plays  even  the  coherence  of  a  story.  As  they  were 
all  dependent  on  companies  of  actors,  they  may  often 
have  put  in  what  their  employers  told  them  was 
needed  to  please  a  part  of  the  audience.  It  is  to 
this  necessity  that  we  may  attribute  the  comic  scenes 
of  Br  Faustus  if  we  wish  to  find  an  excuse  for  Marlowe 
— and  if,  indeed,  they  were  his,  and  not  written  in  by 
others  at  the  orders  of  Henslowe  the  manager.  But 
this  does  not  account  for  all.      When  it  is  allowed  for, 


THE    EARLIER   DRAMATISTS.  247 

enough  remains  to  show  that  all  these  predecessors  of 
Shakespeare  were  unable  to  see  the  difference  between 
horseplay  and  humour,  and  were  almost  equally 
blind  to  the  immense  distinction  between  the  "  grand 
manner"  and  mere  fustian.  This  last,  indeed,  had 
an  irresistible  attraction  for  them,  and  not  less  for 
Marlowe  than  for  the  others.  If  it  had  not  he  would 
never  have  put  the  rant  of  Tamhurlaine  into  the  mouth 
which  spoke  the  superb  lines  beginning  "If  all  the  pens 
that  ever  poets  held,"  nor  would  he  have  allowed  Bara- 
bas  to  sink  from  the  gloomy  magnificence  of  his  begin- 
ning into  a  mere  grotesque  puppet  Jew  with  a  big  nose. 
"All  that  is  known  with  any  degree  of  certainty 
concerning  Shakespeare  is,  —  that  he  was  born  at 
Stratford  -  upon  -  Avon  —  married   and    had 

Sliakespeare. 

children  there — went  to  London,  where  he 
commenced  actor,  and  wrote  poems  and  plays — re- 
turned to  Stratford,  made  his  will,  died,  and  was 
buried."  This  summary,  which  Steevens  put  in  a 
note  to  the  ninety-third  sonnet,  is  as  true  as  when 
it  was  written  in  the  last  century.  It  is  not  quite 
exhaustive,  for  we  know  that  Shakespeare  had  the 
respect  and  affection  of  his  contemporaries  from 
Chettle  to  Ben  Jonson,  and  also  that  he  was  a  very 
prosperous  man.  Yet  Steevens  included  nearly  all 
that  the  most  extreme  industry  has  been  able  to 
discover  of  Shakespeare's  life.  The  date  of  his  birth 
was  on  or  just  before  the  23rd  April  1564,  and  he 
died  on  that  day  in  1616.  From  the  age  of  about 
twenty  till  he  was  nearly  forty  he  lived  in  London  as 
actor  or  manager.     In  his  youth  he  wrote  two  poems 


248      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

in  the  prevailing  fashion,  Venus  and  Adonis  and  The 
Rape  of  Lucrece.  The  sonnets  published  in  1609  belong 
to  a  later  period,  but  it  is  impossible  to  fix  their  date. 
His  chief  work  was  always  done  for  the  company  to 
which  he  belonged.  For  that  he  recast  old  plays  or 
wrote  new  ones.  The  poems  alone  were  published  by 
himself.  His  sonnets  appeared  in  a  pirated  edition 
during  his  life,  and  his  plays  after  his  death,  when  his 
fellow-actors  had  no  longer  an  overpowering  motive 
to  keep  them  for  themselves.  On  this  very  slight 
framework  there  has  been  built  a  vast  superstructure 
of  guesswork  of  which  very  little  need  be  said  here. 

It  is  not  only  the  large  element  of  sheer  folly  in 
these  guesses,  the  imbecile  attempt  to  prove  that  the 
Guesses  about  m&n  of  whom  Ben  Jonson  spoke  and 
us  ufe.  wrote  the  well-known  words  was  not  the 
author  of  his  own  plays,  which  may  be  put  aside. 
Nor  is  it  even  the  hardly  less  imbecile  effort  to  find 
political  journalism,  or  other  things  didactic,  social, 
and  scientific,  in  his  dramas.  Don  M.  Menendez, 
speaking  of  the  very  similar  race  of  Cervantistas,  has 
said  that  this  is  the  resource  of  people,  often  respect- 
able for  other  reasons,  who  being  unable  to  enjoy 
literature  as  literature,  but  being  also  conscious  that 
they  ought  to  enjoy  it,  have  been  driven  to  look  for 
something  else  in  their  author.  These  good  people 
have  fixed  on  Shakespeare,  as  their  like  have  settled 
on  Moliere  in  France  and  Cervantes  in  Spain.  Some 
great  names  may  be  quoted  to  give  a  certain  au- 
thority to  the  supposition  that  Shakespeare  unlocked 
his   heart   with   the   key   of  the   sonnet.     For    their 


THE   EARLIER   DRAMATISTS.  249 

sake  we  must  not  dismiss  this  guess  as  uncere- 
moniously as  we  may  well  turn  out  the  egregious 
Bacon  theory  and  its  like.  Yet  it  is  perhaps  not 
essentially  wiser.  Even  if  we  accept  it,  nothing  is 
proved  except  this,  that  Shakespeare  experienced 
some  of  the  common  fortunes  of  men  of  letters  and 
other  men,  and  then  this,  that  he  carried  the  in- 
delicacy of  his  time  to  its  possible  extreme.  We 
know  that  his  "  sugared  sonnets  "  were  handed  about 
among  his  friends  so  freely  that  they  got  into  print. 
So  much  is  certain.  If  they  did  unlock  his  heart, 
and  if  the  sonnet  beginning  "  My  mistress'  eyes  are 
nothing  like  the  sun  "  did  refer  to  a  particular  person 
who  must  have  been  perfectly  well  known  to  many 
of  its  readers,  then  this  very  great  poet  and  dramatist 
must  have  been  singularly  destitute  of  the  beginnings 
of  a  sense  of  shame,  even  according  to  the  standard 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  It  is  impossible  to  prove 
that  those  who  take  this  view  are  wrong — and  if  the 
word  evidence  has  any  meaning,  equally  impossible  to 
prove  that  they  are  right.  But  be  their  belief  right  or 
wrong,  the  value  of  the  sonnets  is  not  affected.  They 
are  valuable,  not  because  they  reveal  the  passing 
fortunes  of  one  man,  however  great,  but  because  they 
express  what  is  permanent  in  mankind  in  language  of 
everlasting  excellence. 

The  work  by  which  Shakespeare  was  first  known 

order  of     in   his  time  were   the   poems    Venus  and 

us  work.    Adonis  and    The   Rape   of  Lucrece,  which 

appeared  respectively  in  1593  and  1594.     Though  the 

dates  of  composition  and  order  of  succession  of  his 


250      EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

plays  are  obscure,  it  is  certain  that  he  was  working 
for  the  stage  before  the  first  of  these  years.  But 
as  yet  he  was  rather  redoing  the  work  of  others 
than  producing  for  himself.  The  sonnets  were  widely 
known  by  1598,  and  were  in  all  probability  inspired, 
as  so  many  other  collections  of  the  same  class,  though 
of  very  different  degrees  of  merit,  were,  by  the 
example  of  Astrophel  and  Stella.  The  chronology  of 
the  plays  is,  it  may  be  repeated,  difficult  to  settle, 
but  on  the  whole  they  may  be  asserted  to  have 
followed  the  order  in  which  it  would  appear  natural 
to  assign  them  on  internal  evidence.  First  come 
those  in  which  his  hand,  though  never  to  be  mis- 
taken, is  seen  in  least  power — Pericles  and  Henry  VI. 
Then  come  others  in  which  we  get  most  of  the 
mere  fashion  of  the  time,  its  euphuism  and  other 
affectations  —  The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  Love's 
Labour  Lost,  &c.  Next  follow  the  long  series  of 
romantic  plays  and  chronicle  plays,  darkened  by 
tragedy  and  irradiated  by  humour — The  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream,  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Henry  IV.,  As  Yon 
Like  It.  The  great  tragedies  with  what  it  is  perhaps 
more  accurate  to  call  the  greater  drama,  The  Tempest 
and  The  Winter's  Tale,  belong  to  the  later  years. 

The  difficulty  which  meets  the  critic  who  wishes 
to  speak,  after  so  many  others,  of  Cervantes,  stands 

Estimates  of  in  an  even  more  formidable  shape  on  the 

Shakespeare.    path  Qf    him  who  wishes  to  gpeak  of  gj^ 

speare.  Most  generations  have  produced  those  who 
have  spoken  badly.  When  they  were  honest,  and 
were  not  also  incapable  of  literature,  which  has  some- 


THE   EARLIER   DRAMATISTS.  251 

times  been  the  case,  they  were  enslaved  to  some 
fashion,  some  pedantry  of  their  own  time.  With 
these  have  been  the  merely  inept,  and  there  has 
not  been  wanting  the  buffoon,  straining  after  singu- 
larity. The  gutter  and  the  green-room  have  been 
audible.  But  by  the  side  of  these  there  has  been 
an  unbroken  testimony  to  Shakespeare  borne  by  the 
greatest  masters  of  English  literature.  It  began  with 
Ben  Jonson,  and  has  lasted  till  it  has  become  well- 
nigh  superfluous  amid  the  general  agreement  of  the 
world.  As  in  the  case  of  Cervantes,  this  agreement 
of  the  competent  judges,  this  universal  acceptance, 
are  by  themselves  enough  to  dispense  us  from  proving 
that  in  him  there  was  something  more  than  was 
merely  national.  Spenser,  Marlowe,  Ben  Jonson, 
all  the  Elizabethans,  belong  to  us  and  to  others  only 
as  objects  of  literary  study,  as  Garcilaso,  Lope, 
Calderon,  all  the  others  of  Spain's  great  time,  belong 
to  the  Spaniards.  But  Shakespeare  and  Cervantes, 
though  the  first  is  very  English  and  the  second  very 
Spanish,  belong  to  the  whole  world.  Their  country- 
men may  understand  them  best,  but  there  is  that 
in  them  which  is  common  to  all  humanity.  The 
one  star  differs  from  the  other  in  glory ;  for  if 
Cervantes  brought  the  matter  of  his  masterpiece 
under  the  "species  of  eternity,"  he  brought  much 
less  than  Shakespeare,  who  included  everything  ex- 
cept religion,  and  leaves  us  persuaded  of  his  power 
to  deal  with  that.  Don  Quixote  is  equivalent  to  one 
of  the  great  dramas.  Yet  they  meet  in  this  supreme 
quality  of  universality.     So  much  can  be  said  of  only 


252      EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

one  among  their  contemporaries,  the  Frenchman 
Montaigne,  in  whom  also  there  was  something  which 
speaks  to  all  men  at  all  times. 

The  work  of  Shakespeare  falls  into  two  classes — the 
pure  poetry  and  the  drama.  The  second  is,  indeed, 
Divisions  of  intensely  poetic,  both  in  form  and  spirit, 
his  work.  so  th^  tjie  division  becomes  unintelligent 
if  we  push  it  too  far.  But  when  his  poetry  is  dramatic 
— when  it  is  employed  to  set  forth  an  action  by  talk — 
it  is  used  for  another  purpose,  and  is  found  in  combin- 
ation with  other  qualities  than  are  to  be  found  in  the 
pure  poems.  These  are  the  Venus  and  Adonis,  The 
Rape  of  Lucrece,  the  sonnets,  and  the  lyrics,  which 
are  mostly  to  be  found  in  the  plays,  but  can  be 
detached  from  them.  It  is  a  sufficient  proof  of  the 
vast  sweep  of  Shakespeare's  genius  that  if  we  had 
nothing  of  him  but  these,  the  loss  to  the  literature  of 
the  world  would  be  irreparable,  but  he  would  still  be 
a  great  poet.     The  Venus  and  Adonis  and 

The  poems. 

The  Rape  of  Lucrece  are  greater  poems  than 
Marlowe's  Hero  and  Zeander,  more  intense  in  passion, 
more  uniformly  magnificent  in  expression.  Marlowe 
may  reach  their  level  when  he  is  speaking  to  the  full 
extent  of  his  power,  but  he  is  not  always  there. 
Shakespeare  always  leaves  the  impression  that  he  is 
within  the  limit  of  what  he  could  do.  The  lyrics  are 
the  most  perfect  achievements  of  an  age  of  lyric 
poetry.  It  is  the  presence  of  this  note  which  atones 
for  the  much  that  is  wanting  in  Lyly,  Peele,  and 
Greene.  But  if  their  best  is  put  beside  Shakespeare 
it  suffers,  as  a  pretty  water-colour  would  suffer  if  hung 


THE   EARLIER   DRAMATISTS.  253 

by  the  side  of  a  Velasquez.  They  lose  colour  by  the 
comparison.  The  age  was  rich  in  sonnets.  It  pro- 
duced the  passion  and  melody  of  Sidney,  the  beauty  of 
Spenser,  the  accomplishment  of  Daniel,  and  the  vigour 
of  Drayton.  Yet  Shakespeare's  sonnets  are  no  less 
distinctly  the  greatest  than  his  lyrics.  It  is  even  here 
that  his  pre-eminence  is  the  most  marked,  for  he  has 
triumphed  over  more.  The  lyric  is  free  and  is  brief. 
The  sonnet  is  bound  by  rigid  laws,  and  a  cycle  of 
sonnets  is  peculiarly  liable  to  become  monotonous,  to 
be  redundant,  to  be  mechanical  and  frigid.  But 
Shakespeare's  sonnets,  whether  or  no  they  be  in  the 
order  in  which  he  would  have  put  them,  or  were 
written  to  fall  into  any  particular  order,  gave  a  varied 
yet  consistent  play  of  thought  and  passion,  over- 
shadowed by  the  ever-present  consciousness  of  "the 
barren  rage  of  death's  eternal  cold."  In  them,  too,  we 
always  feel  the  superiority  of  the  faculty  to  the  work 
done.  There  is  no  toil,  no  struggle  to  express.  What 
would  have  made  another  poet  immortal,  if  said  with 
manifest  effort,  is  all  poured  out  in"a  first  fine  care- 
less rapture." 

And  beyond  this  ample  forecourt  and  noble  portico 

lies   the   far  -  spreading   palace   of   the   plays.       The 

dramatic  work  of  Shakespeare  is   greater 

The  dramas.  .    _ .      .  „ 

than  the  purely  poetic,  mamly  because  of 
its  vastly  greater  scope.  It  contains  all  that  is  in  the 
poems,  and  so  much  more  that  they  are,  as  it  were, 
lost  in  the  abundance.  In  this  stately  pleasure-house 
there  are  no  doubt  parts  which  diligent  examination 
will  show  to  bear  the  traces  of  inexperience  in  the 


254      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER    RENAISSAKCK. 

builder,  fragments  of  the  work  of  others,  and  orna- 
ments in  the  passing  taste  of  the  time.  Shakespeare 
laboured  for  the  Globe  Theatre.  He  rearranged  stock 
plays,  and  now  and  then  he  passed  what  he  found 
in  them,  not  because  it  was  good  but  because  it 
would  suffice.  He  was  an  Elizabethan,  and  like  others, 
he  let  his  spirits  and  his  energies  relax  in  mere  play- 
ing with  words,  in  full-mouthed  uproarious  noise,  and 
the  quibbles  which  made  Dr  Johnson  shake  his  head. 
In  common  with  every  other  dramatist  from  Sophocles 
downwards,  he  had  to  consider  his  theatre  and  his 
audience.  The  mere  man  of  letters  writing  "  closet " 
plays  can  forget  the  stage,  and  be  punished  by  the 
discovery  that  his  masterpiece  won't  act.  Shake- 
speare aimed  at  being  acted.  His  stage  had  no 
change  of  scenery,  and  his  audience  loved  action. 
Therefore  he  could  put  in  more  words  than  can  be 
admitted  when  time  must  be  found  for  the  opera- 
tions of  the  stage  -  carpenter  and  the  scene -shifter. 
Therefore  also  he  could  allow  himself  a  licence  in 
the  change  of  scene,  which  is  impossible  when  it 
carries  with  it  a  change  of  scenery.  But  all  this  is 
either  easily  separable  or  can  be  amended  by  re- 
arrangement. And  therein  lies  the  absolute  differ- 
ence between  Shakespeare  and  his  contemporaries. 
The  Jew  of  Malta  could  not  be  made  an  acting  play 
by  any  process  of  manipulation.  Take  from  the  best 
of  the  others  —  even  from  Ben  Jonson  —  what  was 
purely  Elizabethan,  and  how  much  remains  ?  They 
are  excellent  to  read,  and  were  good  to  act  before  an 
audience  which  accepted  their  convention,  but  before 


THE   EARLIER   DRAMATISTS.  255 

that  only.  For  purely  stage  purposes,  too,  their  con- 
vention is  inferior  to  the  Spanish.  The  Dama  Melin- 
drosa  would  be  easily  intelligible  and  interesting  to 
any  audience  to-day,  but  not  Every  Man  in  his  Humour, 
or  Epicene.  With  Shakespeare,  when  the  suppressions 
have  been  made  and  the  scenes  have  been  adapted  to 
new  mechanical  conditions,  there  still  remains — not  in 
all  cases,  indeed,  but  in  most — a  play — that  is,  a  con- 
sistent action — carried  on  by  possible  characters,  be- 
having and  speaking  differently  from  ns  in  those  things 
which  are  merely  external,  but  in  perfect  agreement  in 
all  the  essentials,  both  with  themselves  and  with  un- 
changing human  nature. 

It  is  this  inner  bond  of  life  which  gives  to  Shake- 
speare's plays  their  unity  and  their  enduring  vitality. 
The  superb  verse,  the  faultless  expression  of  every 
human  emotion,  from  the  love  of  Romeo  or  the 
intrepid  despair  of  Macbeth  down  to  the  grotesque 
devotion  of  Bardolph,  "  Would  I  were  with  him 
wheresome'er  he  is,  either  in  Heaven  or  in  Hell," 
are  the  outward  and  visible  signs  of  this  inward  and 
spiritual  truth  to  nature.  Henry  IV.  and  Henry  V. 
may  seem  to  be  but  straggling  plays  when  they  are 
compared  with  the  exactly  fitted  plots  of  Lope  de 
Vega  or  the  arranged,  selected,  concentrated  action 
of  Eacine.     So  the  free-growing  forest-tree 

The  reality  of    #  . 

Shakespeare's  is  less  trim  and  balanced  than  the  clipped 

yew.      But  it  has  the  higher  life  and  the 

finer  unity.    The  Henry  V.  who  meets  Falstaff  with — 

"  I  know  thee  not,  old  man :  fall  to  thy  prayers  ; 
How  ill  white  hairs  become  a  fool  and  jester !" 


256      EUROPEAN   L1TERATUKE — LATEll  KENAISSANCE. 

is  the  same  man  as  he  who  said — 

"  I  know  you  all,  and  will  awhile  uphold 
The  unyoked  humour  of  your  idleness.      .  . 
I'll  so  offend,  to  make  offence  a  skill ; 
Redeeming  time  when  men  think  least  I  will." 

Nor  is  he  altered  when  he  seeks  a  complacent  arch- 
bishop to  provide  him  with  an  excuse  for  a  war  of 
aggression,  and  so  having  provided  for  both  worlds, 
takes  advantage  of  his  own  wrong  to  throw  the  re- 
sponsibility for  the  miseries  of  the  war  on  the  French. 
In  the  tavern,  in  the  council-chamber,  on  the  battle- 
field, by  the  sick-bed  of  his  father,  he  is  always  the 
same  Henry  of  Monmouth,  a  foundation  of  cold  able 
selfishness,  a  surface  of  valour  and  showy  magna- 
nimity which  costs  him  nothing — a  perfect  portrait  of 
the  "  unconscious  hypocrite."  The  circumstances  may 
change  but  not  the  man.  He  only  adapts  the  out- 
ward show  to  them.  The  incomparably  more  honest 
nature  of  Falstaff  is  as  consistent  as  the  king's.  He 
is  a  Bohemian  who  is  not  vicious  nor  cruel,  but  who 
simply  follows  the  lusts  of  the  flesh  spontaneously, 
and  is  lovable  for  his  geniality,  his  wit,  and  his  perfect 
sincerity.  Falstaff  is  not,  properly  speaking,  immoral. 
He  is  only  exterior  to  morals.  If  he  were  cruel  or 
treacherous  he  would  be  horrible,  but  he  is  neither. 
He  is  only  a  humorous,  fat,  meat-,  drink-,  and  ease- 
loving  animal.  Given  these  two,  and  around  them  a 
crowd  of  others,  heroic,  grotesque,  or  even  only  com- 
monplace, all  doing  credible  things  on  the  green 
earth,  and  the  result  is  a  coherent  action,  not  made 


THE  EARLIER  DRAMATISTS.  257 

on  the  model  of  a  Chinese  puzzle,  but  yet  consistent, 
because  being  real  and  true  to  life,  the  characters  act 
intelligibly,  and  do  nothing  uncaused,  unnatural,  or 
inconsequent. 

The  mere  fact  that  it  is  possible  to  differ  as  to  the 
real  nature  of  some  of  Shakespeare's  characters  is  a 
tribute  to  their  reality.  We  are  never  in  the  least 
doubt  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  heroes  of  Corneille  or 
Eacine,  or  the  galanes,  damas,  and  jealous  husbands  of 
Lope  and  Calderon.  In  them  we  have  certain  qualities, 
certain  manifestations  of  character,  selected  and  kept 
so  well  before  us  that  they  explain  themselves,  as  a 
Spaniard  might  say,  a  crossbow-shot  off.  Even  Moliere, 
who  comes  nearest  to  Shakespeare,  is  simple  and  trans- 
parent, because  he  also  is,  in  comparison,  narrow  and 
arbitrary.  We  may  differ  as  to  his  purpose  in  writing 
Don  Juan  or  Tartuffe.  Was  he  only  drawing  infidelity 
and  hypocrisy  to  make  them  hateful  ?  Was  he  speak- 
ing for  the  libertins  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the 
forerunners  of  the  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth,  who 
were  in  revolt  against  the  claim  of  religion  to  be  a 
guide  of  life  and  to  control  conduct?  But  the  per- 
sonages explain  themselves.  Again,  when  we  meet 
one  of  those  sudden,  unexplained,  or  insufficiently  ex- 
plained alterations  of  the  whole  nature  of  a  man  or 
woman,  so  common  with  the  other  Elizabethan  drama- 
tists, and  not  very  rare  with  the  Spaniards,  we  know 
it  to  be  false  to  life,  and  put  it  down  at  once  as  a 
clumsy  playwright's  device.  But  the  characters  of 
Shakespeare  are  like  the  great  figures  of  history,  real, 
and  yet  not  always  to  be  understood  at  once,  because 

R 


258      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

they  have  the  variety,  the  complexity,  and  the  mystery 
of  nature. 

The  men  who  grew  up  around  Shakespeare  in  the 
last  years  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  who  outlived 
him,  do  not  belong  to  our  subject.  It  is  enough  to 
point  out  how  unlikely  it  was  that  they  would  continue 
him.  Ben  Jonson,  who  was  by  far  the  strongest  of 
them,  tacitly  confessed  that  there  could  be  no  Shake- 
spearian drama  without  Shakespeare,  when  he  deliber- 
ately sacrificed  character  to  the  convenient  simplicity 
of  the  "humour,"  and  looked  for  the  structural  co- 
herence of  his  plays  to  the  unities.  Other  men  who 
were  less  wise  preferred  to  keep  the  freedom  which 
they  had  not  the  strength  to  bear. 


259 


CHAPTER    IX. 

THE   ELIZABETHAN   PROSE-WRITERS. 

ELIZABETHAN   PROSE — TWO   SCHOOLS    OF    WRITERS — ROGER    ASCHAM — HIS 

BOOKS     AND     STYLE WEBBE     AND    PUTTENHAM  —  THE    SENTENCE — 

EUPHUISM  —  THE  '  ARCADIA  '  —  SIDNEY'S  STYLE  —  SHORT  STORIES — 
NASH'S  'UNFORTUNATE  TRAVELLER' — NASH  AND  THE  PAMPHLET- 
EERS— MARTIN  MARPRELATE — ORIGIN  OF  THE  MARPRELATE  TRACTS 
— THE  'DIOTREPHES' — COURSE  OF  THE  CONTROVERSY — ITS  PLACE 
IN  LITERARY   HISTORY — HOOKER — '  THE    ECCLESIASTICAL   POLITY.' 

The  reign  of  Elizabeth  and  the  first  years  of  James, 
which  cover  the  period  of  the  Later  Renaissance  in 
Elizabethan    England,  were  times  of  poetry  and  not  of 
prose.  prose.      It  is  true  that  much   prose  was 

written,  that  some  of  it  is  admirable,  and  that  more 
is  interesting.  It  is  also  true  that  some  of  the  greatest 
masters  of  English  prose  were  alive,  and  were  working 
in  these  years.  Yet  these  men,  whose  chief  was 
Bacon,  belong,  by  their  character,  their  influence,  and 
by  the  dates  of  their  greatest  achievements,  to  the 
generations  described  as  Jacobean  and  Caroline.  In 
the  Elizabethan  time  proper  there  is  but  one  very 


2 GO      EUROPEAN    LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

great  name  among  prose  -  writers,  that  of  Hooker ; 
while  before  him  and  around  him  there  are  many 
whose  work  was  meritorious,  or  interesting,  or  curious 
— anything,  in  fact,  but  great — and  of  not  a  few  of 
them  it  has  to  be  said  that  in  the  long-run  they  were 
not  profitable. 

The  difficulty  of  marshalling  these  men  of  letters  in 
an  orderly  way  is  not  small.  The  chronological  arrange- 
ment, besides  being  ill  -  adapted  to  contemporaries, 
does  not  show  their  real  relations  to  one  another,  or 
their  place  in  English  literature.  The  division  by 
subject  is  utterly  mechanical,  when  very  different 
matter  was  handled  in  the  same  style  and  often  by 
the  same  men.  Nash  is  always  Nash,  whether  he 
was  writing  Christ's  Tears  over  Jerusalem,  or  Have  ivith 
you  to  Saffron  Walden,  or  The  Unfortunate  Traveller. 
We  shall  be  better  able  to  make  a  survey  of  this  side 
of  the  literature  of  the  Later  Eenaissance  in  England 
if  we  class  its  prose- writers  by  their  spirit  and  their 
style,  and  treat  their  dates  and  their  matter  (which, 
however,  are  not  to  be  dismissed  as  of  no  importance) 
as  subordinate. 

If  this  classification,  then,  is  permitted,  we  may 
divide  the  Elizabethan  prose  -  writers  into  those  whose 
Two  schools  of  aim  it  was  to  give  "  English  matter  in  the 
writers.  English  tongue  for  Englishmen,"  and  those 

who  strove  for  something  better,  more  ornate,  lofty, 
peculiar,  and,  as  they  held,  more  literary,  than  was  to 
be  reached  by  the  pursuit  of  this  modest  purpose. 
The  chief  of  the  first  in  order  of  time  was  Ascham, 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   PROSE- WRITERS.  261 

who,  however,  belonged  to  an  earlier  generation, 
though  he  died  in  the  queen's  reign,  and  part  of 
his  work  was  published  after  his  death.  The  great 
exemplar  of  the  second  was  Lyly.  In  neither  case 
did  the  followers  merely  imitate  their  leader.  There 
is  much  in  Hooker  which  is  not  in  Ascham.  The 
enredados  razones — the  roundabout  affectations  of  the 
authors  of  the  Spanish  Libros  de  Caballerias  —  may 
have  had  some  influence  on  Sidney,  who  certainly 
knew  them.  Kabelais  and  Aretino  were  much  read 
and  imitated  by  some  who  also  "parled  Euphues." 
But  the  distinction  holds  good  none  the  less.  On 
the  one  side  are  those  who,  having  something  to 
say,  were  content  to  say  it  perspicuously.  On  the 
other  were  those  who,  whether  they  had  something 
to  say  or  whether  they  were  simply  determined 
to  be  talking,  were  careful  to  give  their  utterances 
some  stamp  of  distinction.  If  the  first  were  liable 
to  become  pedestrian,  the  second  were  threatened  by 
an  obvious  danger.  It  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  pass 
through  the  eye  of  a  needle  than  for  the  writer  who 
has  got  tired  of  milking  the  cow,  and  wants  to  milk 
the  bull,  to  escape  sheer  affectation — which  affecta- 
tion, again,  is  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  a  trick, 
a  juggle  with  words  repeated  over  and  over  again. 

The  prose  which  was  first  written  for  literary  pur- 
poses in  Elizabeth's  time  was  an  inheritance  from  the 
reign  of  Henry  VIII.  It  was  the  plain  downright 
style  of  Ascham — the  style  of  a  man  who  thought  in 
Latin,  and  turned  it  into  good  current  English. 


262      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

Yet  the  writers  who  were  content  to  be  as  plain  and 
downright  as  Ascham  do  not  require  many  words. 
webbe  and  Such  treatises  as  Webbe's  Discourse  of  Eng- 
PvttenMm.  j^  Fodrie>  printed  in  1586,  or  the  Arte 
of  English  Poesie,  published  in  1589,  and  attributed 
to  George  Puttenham  by  Carew  in  1614,  are  interest- 
ing, but  it  cannot  be  said  that  they  hold  an  impor- 
tant place  in  English  literature,  or  had  any  consider- 
able effect.  The  Arte  of  English  Poesie  is  indeed  a 
very  sane  and  thorough  critical  treatise,  one  proof 
among  others  that  if  so  many  of  the  Elizabethan 
writers  were  wild  and  shapeless,  it  was  not  because 
none  in  their  time  thought  wisely  on  questions  of  lit- 
erary principle  and  of  form.  The  explanation  of  their 
extravagance  may  be  more  safely  looked  for  else- 
where. When  Nash  was  reproached  for  his  "  boister- 
ous compound  words,"  he  answered,  "That  no  wind 
that  blows  strong  but  is  boisterous,  no  speech  or  words 
of  any  power  or  force  to  confute,  or  persuade,  but  must 
be  swelling  and  boisterous."  This  is  Brantome's  ex- 
cuse for  the  rodomontade,  that  superb  and  swelling 
words  go  well  with  daring  deeds.  The  Elizabethans 
were  so  vehement  and  headlong,  that  they  sought 
naturally  for  the  "  word  of  power,"  for  the  altisonant 
and  ear-filling  in  language,  and  were  more  tolerant 
of  bombast  than  of  the   pedestrian.      Their   general 

inability  to  confine  themselves  to  the  Sen- 
ile sentence. 

tence  may  be  excused  on  the  same  ground. 
They  felt  so  much,  and  so  strongly,  that  they  could 
not  stop  to  disentangle  and  arrange.  Certainly  if 
Englishmen  sinned  in  this  respect  it  was  against  the 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   PSOSK-WRITBRS.  263 

light.  Models  were  not  wanting  to  them,  and  they 
were  not  unaware  of  the  virtue  of  being  clear  and 
coherent.  Whoever  the  author  of  Martin  Marpre- 
late's  Epistle  may  have  been — Penry,  Udall,  Barrow, 
or  another — he  knew  a  bad  sentence  as  well  as  any 
of  the  Queen  Anne  men.  He  fixes,  as  any  of  them 
might  have  done,  on  the  confused  heap  of  clauses 
which  did  duty  for  sentences  in  Dean  John  Bridges's 
Defence  of  the  Government  of  the  Church  of  England. 
"And  learned  brother  Bridges,"  he  writes,  "a  man 
might  almost  run  himself  out  of  breath  before  he 
could  come  to  a  full  point  in  many  places  in  your 
book.  Page  69,  line  3,  speaking  of  the  extraordinary 
gifts  in  the  Apostles'  time,  you  have  this  sweet  learn- 
ing,1 '  Yea  some  of  them  have  for  a  great  part  of  the 
time,  continued  even  till  our  times,  and  yet  continue, 
as  the  operation  of  great  works,  or  if  they  mean  mira- 
cles, which  were  not  ordinary,  no  not  in  that  extra- 
ordinary time,  and  as  the  hypocrites  had  them,  so 
might  and  had  divers  of  the  Papists,  and  yet  their 
cause  never  the  better,  and  the  like  may  we  say  of  the 
gifts  of  speaking  with  tongues  which  have  not  been 
with  study  before  learned,  as  Anthony,  &c,  and  divers 
also  among  the  ancient  fathers,  and  some  among  the 
Papists,  and  some  among  us,  have  not  been  destitute 
of  the  gifts  of  prophesying,  and  much  more  may  I  say 
this  of  the  gift  of  healing,  for  none  of  those  gifts  or 

1  These  two  sentences  are  reprinted  as  one  by  Petheram,  but  it  is 
obvious  that  the  want  of  a  full  stop  after  "  book  "  is  a  printer's  error. 
No  changes  in  the  punctuation  can  reduce  Dean  Bridges  to  order. 
It  would  be  necessary  to  treat  him  as  Cobbett  did  Castlereagh. 


264      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

graces  given  then  or  since,  or  yet  to  men,  infer  the 
grace  of  God's  election  to  be  of  necessity  to  salvation.' " 
The  Dean's  meaning  reveals  itself  at  the  third  or 
fourth  reading,  but  this  is  the  style  of  Mrs  Nickleby. 
Martin  Marprelate  saw  its  vices,  and  noted  on  the 
margin,  "  Hoo  hoo,  Dean,  take  breath  and  then  to  it 
again,"  as  Swift  himself  might  have  done.  Dr  Bridges 
is  no  authority  in  English  literature,  but  he  was  a 
learned  man,  and  must  have  had  some  practice  in 
preaching.  Yet  we  see  that  he  fell  into  a  confusion 
which  at  any  time  after  the  seventeenth  century 
would  have  been  a  proof  either  of  extreme  ignorance, 
or  of  some  such  defect  of  power  to  express  himself  as 
accounts  for  the  obscurity  of  Castlereagh.  Dean 
Bridges  shows  only  the  disastrous  consequences  of 
that  disregard  of  the  proper  limit  of  the  sentence 
which  was  common  with  some  of  the  greatest  writers 
of  his  time.  Take,  for  instance,  this  passage  from  Sir 
Walter  Baleigh's  account  of  the  loss  of  the  Revenge, 
published  in  1591.  He  begins  admirably:  "All  the 
powder  of  the  Revenge  was  now  spent,  all  her  pikes 
were  broken,  forty  of  her  best  men  slain,  and  the 
most  part  of  the  rest  hurt."  Several  rapid  sentences 
follow,  and  then  we  come  to : 1  "  Sir  Richard  finding 
himself  in  this  distress,  and  unable  any  longer  to 
make  resistance  having  endured  in  this  fifteen  hours' 

1  Last  Fight  of  the  Revenge  in  Arber's  English  Reprints.  I  have 
suppressed  the  full  stop  after  "assaults  and  entries,"  which  is  plainly 
a  printer's  error.  Raleigh  would  have  been  as  inarticulate  as  Dr 
Bridges  if  he  thought  that  a  new  sentence  could  begin  at  "and  that 
himself."  When  the  full  stop  is  replaced  by  a  comma,  what  we 
have  is  a  grammatical  though  overladen  and  redundant  sentence. 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   PROSE- WRITERS.  265 

fight,  the  assault  of  fifteen  several  Armadoes,  all  by 
turns  aboard  him,  and  by  estimation  eight  hundred 
shot  of  great  artillery,  besides  many  assaults  and 
entries,  and  that  himself  and  the  ship  must  needs  be 
possessed  by  the  enemy,  who  were  now  all  cast  in  a 
ring  about  him;  the  Eevenge  not  able  to  move  one 
way  or  other  but  as  she  was  moved  with  the  waves 
and  billow  of  the  sea,  commanded  the  Master  Gunner, 
whom  he  knew  to  be  a  most  resolute  man,  to  split  and 
sink  the  ship,  that  thereby  nothing  might  remain  of 
glory  or  victory  to  the  Spaniards,  seeing  in  so  many 
hours'  fight,  and  with  so  great  a  navy  they  were  not 
able  to  take  her,  having  had  fifteen  hours'  time,  fifteen 
thousand  men,  and  fifty  and  three  sail  of  men  of  war 
to  perform  it  withal.  And  persuaded  the  company  or 
as  many  as  he  could  induce  to  yield  themselves  unto 
God,  and  to  the  mercy  of  none  else,  but  as  they  had 
like  valiant  resolute  men  repulsed  so  many  enemies, 
they  should  not  now  shorten  the  honour  of  their 
nation,  by  prolonging  their  own  lives  for  a  few  hours 
or  a  few  days." 

This  is  the  style  of  a  writer  who  does  not  know 
when  a  sentence  has  come  to  an  end,  and  who,  when 
he  writes  one  which  is  properly  constructed,  does  it 
mainly  by  good  fortune.  If  it  is  more  intelligible 
than  Dr  Bridges,  the  cause  of  the  superiority  lies 
at  least  partly  in  this,  that  Ealeigh  had  the  easier 
task  to  perform.  He  had  only  to  state  facts,  not 
to  expound  doctrine. 

While  making  allowance  for  the  inward  and 
spiritual   cause   of   the   invasion   of   English   by   the 


2GG      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

long,  confused,  overladen  sentence,  it  must  also  be 
confessed  that  the  evil  was  largely  due  to  the 
prevalence  of  affected  styles  of  writing,  which  lent 
themselves  to  over  -  elaboration.  Two  bad  models 
were  set  before  Englishmen  about  the  middle  of 
the  queen's  reign,  and  they  unfortunately  became, 
and  remained  for  long,  exceedingly  popular — Lyly's 
euphuism,  and  the  wiredrawn  finicking  style  of 
Sidney's  Arcadia,  to  which  no  name  has  ever  been 
given.  The  lives  of  these  authors  have  already 
been  dealt  with  under  another  head.  Their  style, 
as  shown  in  their  stories,  and  its  effect  on  English 
literature,  are  the  matters  in  hand.  Euphuism  and 
the  manner  of  the  Arcadia  appear  to  have  been 
elaborated  by  their  authors  about  the  same  time, 
though  Lyly  takes  precedence  in  the  order  of 
publication.  Euphues,  the  Anatomy  of  Wit,  was 
printed  in  1579,  Euphues  and  his  England  in  the 
following  year.1 

Euphuism  has  become  a  name  for  literary  affecta- 
tion, and  is  in  that  sense  often  used  with  very  little 
precision.      It  is   a  very  peculiar  form  of 

Euphuism.        *  . 

affectation.  The  two  main  features  of  the 
style  —  the  mechanical  antitheses  and  the  abuse  of 
similes  —  have  been  described  already.  Euphues,  in 
so  far  as  it  is  a  story,  is  as  near  as  may  be  naught. 
The  hero  from  whom  it  takes  its  name  is  the  grand- 
father of  all  virtuous,  solemn,  and  didactic  prigs. 
He  makes  two  excursions  into  the  world  from  his 
native  Athens.      In  the  first  he  induces   a   lady  at 

1  Arbor's  English  Reprints.     John  Lyly,  M.A.,  Euphues.     1868. 


THE   ELIZABETHAN    PROSE-WRITERS.  267 

Naples  to  jilt  her  lover  Philautus,  and  is  by  her 
most  justly  jilted  in  turn.  He  floods  southern  Italy 
with  antithetical  platitude,  and  retires  to  Athens. 
Then  Euphues  and  Philautus  come  to  England,  where 
the  second,  after  philandering  with  one  lady,  marries 
another.  Euphues  remains  didactic  and  superior. 
At  last  he  goes  back  to  a  cave  in  Silexedra.  There  is 
a  great  deal  of  praise  of  Queen  Elizabeth  in  the  second 
part,  as  indeed  there  was  in  all  the  literature  of  her 
time  as  high  as  Shakespeare's  plays  and  the  Ecclesi- 
astical Polity.  There  are  also  pages  of  such  matter  as 
this  :  "  But  as  the  cypress-tree  the  more  it  is  watered 
the  more  it  withereth,  and  the  oftener  it  is  lopped  the 
sooner  it  dieth,  so  unbridled  youth  the  more  it  is  also 
by  grave  advice  counselled  or  due  correction  controlled, 
the  sooner  it  falleth  to  confusion,  hating  all  reasons 
that  would  bring  it  from  folly,  as  that  tree  doeth 
all  remedies,  that  should  make  it  fertile."  Un- 
bridled youth  might  have  answered  that  if  lopping 
and  watering  are  bad  for  the  cypress  he  must  be 
a  poor  forester  who  persists  in  lopping  and  water- 
ing. But  the  youth  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign, 
which  was  unbridled  enough,  was  also  more  respect- 
ful. It  listened  to  the  due  correction  and  grave 
counsel  of  Euphues  with  deference.  It  did  more, 
for  it  imitated  him.  The  unbridled  Nash  euphuised, 
and  so  did  many  another.  Alongside  the  fire  from 
heaven,  and  elsewhere,  of  the  Elizabethan  time,  there 
was  an  unending  wishy  -  washy,  though  frequently 
turbid,  flow  of  copy-book  heading,  which  came  from 
the  great  Lylyan  source.      It   looks   strange   that   a 


268      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

time  which  loved  Tamburlaine  and  produced  the 
great  lyric,  should  also  have  delighted  in  this  square- 
toed  finical  vacuity.  But  perhaps,  again,  it  is  not 
so  wonderful.  There  was  also  in  the  Elizabethan 
time  a  liking  for  what  looked  superior  to  the  com- 
mon herd.  About  the  Court  there  was  much  foppery, 
and  there  were  many  who  wished  to  resemble 
the  fine  gentlemen  of  the  Court,  while  the  reviv- 
ing morality  of  the  age,  compatible  as  it  was  with 
much  individual  profligacy,  made  men  respectful  of 
virtuous  commonplace.  With  the  minority  of  Edward 
VI.  and  the  brutality  of  the  Court  of  Henry  VIII. 
close  behind  them,  it  was  as  yet  hardly  the  case 
that  "the  cardinal  virtues  were  to  be  taken  for 
granted  among  English  gentlemen."  Surrey  may 
have  been  jesting  when  he  told  his  sister  to  make 
herself  the  king's  mistress,  but  what  a  society  that 
must  have  been  in  which  a  brother,  and  he  "  a  mirror 
of  chivalry,"  thought  this  a  mere  jest.  Now  Lyly 
was  very  moral,  a  fop  to  his  fingers'  ends,  and  with 
all  his  oddity  and  his  pedantry,  there  is  a  real, 
though  very  artificial,  distinction  about  him.  Fin- 
ally, there  were  as  yet  few  and  insignificant  rivals. 
It  is  not  then  at  all  surprising  that  his  style  was 
taken  up  at  Court  as  "the  thing,"  and  accepted  by 
the  honest  admiration,  to  say  nothing  of  the  snob- 
bery, of  the  outer  world. 

Lyly  sinned  by  setting  an  example  of  a  stilted  style  ; 
but  his  sentence  (for  he  had  but  one)  is  as  complete 
as  the  constant  use  of  the  formula,  "  As  the  A  is  B,  so 
the  C  is  D,  and  the  more  E  is  F  the  more  G  is  H," 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   PROSE- WRITERS.  269 

can  make  it.     With  Sidney's  Arcadia1  we  come  to 

another   kind   of   affectation.      The  circumstances  in 

which  it  was  written  must  be  taken  into 

The  Arcadia.  .  . 

account.  Sir  Philip  Sidney  wrote  to  please 
his  sister,  the  Countess  of  Pembroke,  a  lady  who  was 
somewhat  of  a  prScieuse,  and  who  was  all  her  life  the 
centre  of  some  literary  coterie.  Her  patronage  of  the 
Senecan  play  shows  that  her  leanings  were  towards 
the  superfine,  and  away  from  what  was  natural  to 
Englishmen.  The  Arcadia,  therefore,  is  coterie  work, 
and  does  not  seem  to  have  been  looked  upon  as  very 
serious  by  Sir  Philip  himself.  It  was  written  by  fits 
and  starts,  and  sent  off  to  his  sister  in  instalments. 
The  date  of  composition  must  have  been  about 
1580  and  later,  but  it  was  not  published  till  after 
the  author's  death  in  1584,  and  remains  a  fragment, 
though  a  large  one.  The  Arcadia  is  much  longer 
than  the  "  tedious  brief "  masterpiece  of  Lyly,  even 
without  taking  into  account  the  verse,  of  which  much 
is  written  in  the  classic  metres.  It  is  also  far  more 
interesting:  Although  we  are  accustomed  to  speak 
of  it  as  a  pastoral,  mainly,  it  may  be,  on  the  strength 
of  the  name,  it  is  much  more  a  Libro  de  Caballerias. 
There  is  a  pastoral  element  in  it  unquestionably,  as 
there  is  in  the  stories  of  Feliciano  de  Silva,  but  in  the 
main  its  matter  is  that  of  the  books  of  "Knightly 
Deeds" — challenges  and  defiances,  combats  of  cham- 
pions, loves  of  cavaliers  and  ladies,  the  rout  of  mobs 
of  plebeians  by  the  single  arm  of  the  knight.     There 

1  We   still  await  a  good  edition  of   the  Arcadia.      The  old   are 
numerous.     Dr  Sommer's  reprint  (London,  1891)  is  useful. 


270      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

are  wicked  knights  who  drag  off  ladies  on  the  pommel 
of  their  saddles  and  beat  them,  good  knights  who 
rescue  these  victims,  captures  and  deliverances  of 
damsels,  and  everywhere  the  finest  sentiments  or  the 
most  extreme  wickedness,  just  as  in  the  Amadis  or 
the  Palmerin.  It  is  a  very  entangled  book,  and  is  not 
made  clearer  by  the  fact  that  one  of  the  heroes,  who 
is  disguised  as  an  amazon,  figures  alternately  as 
"he"  and  as  "she."  Yet  Sidney  does  achieve  the 
great  end  of  the  story-teller,  which  is  to  keep  alive 
his  reader's  desire  to  know  what  is  going  to  happen 
next.  The  morality  of  the  book  has  been  very  dif- 
ferently judged.  It  has  been  called  "  a  vain  and 
amatorious  poem,"  a  "  cobweb  across  the  face  of 
nature,"  and  it  has  also  been  described  as  noble  and 
elevating.  Yet  it  would  be  a  curious  morality  which 
could  be  affected  by  the  doings  of  personages  who  are 
either  too  seraphic  for  flesh  and  blood,  or  so  wicked 
that  the  most  shameless  of  mankind  would  resent 
being  compared  to  them. 

The  "  vanity "  of  the  book  lies  in  the  wordy  araa- 

toriousness  of   its  style.      We  have  perhaps  pushed 

the  practice  of  accounting  for  all  fashions 

Sidney's  style.    .  .  „  T 

m  literature  by  imitation  too  lar.  It  is 
quite  as  possible  to  explain  Lyly  without  Guevara 
as  it  would  be  to  account  for  Gongora  without  Lyly. 
Given  the  desire  to  write  in  a  fine  peculiar  form,  and 
the  adoption  of  some  trick  with  words  follows  natur- 
ally, while  the  number  of  tricks  which  can  be  played 
is  not  indefinite.  Yet  it  is  at  least  as  likely  that  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  was  set  on  his  peculiar  form  of  affecta- 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   PROSE- WRITERS.  271 

tion  by  the  Libros  de  Caballcrias,  published  from  thirty 
to  forty  years  earlier,  and  certainly  known  to  him. 
Such  sentences  as  these  send  us  back  at  once  to 
Feliciano  de  Silva:  "Most  beloved  lady,  the  incom- 
parable excellences  of  yourself,  waited  on  by  the 
greatness  of  your  estate,  and  the  importance  of  the 
thing  whereon  my  life  consisteth,  doth  require  both 
many  ceremonies  before  the  beginning  and  many  cir- 
cumstances in  the  uttering  of  my  speech,  both  bold 
and  fearful."  And,  "  Since  no  words  can  carry  with 
them  the  life  of  the  inward  feeling,  I  desire  that  my 
desire  may  be  weighed  in  the  balances  of  honour,  and 
let  Virtue  hold  them ;  for  if  the  highest  love  in  no 
base  person  may  aspire  to  grace,  then  may  I  hope 
your  beauty  will  not  be  without  pity."  Turn  to  the 
first  chapter  of  Shelton's  Don  Quixote,  and  you  meet 
with  those  "  intricate  sentences  "  from  Feliciano  :  "  The 
reason  of  the  unreasonableness  which  against  my 
reason  is  wrought,  doth  so  weaken  my  reason  as 
with  all  reason  I  doe  justly  complaine  on  your 
beauty."  And,  "  The  High  Heavens  which  with 
your  divinity  doe  fortifie  you  divinely  with  the 
starres,  and  make  you  deserveresse  of  the  deserts 
that  your  greatnesse  deserves,"  &C.1 

1  The  first  of  these  sentences  hardly  gives  the  full  absurdity  of  the 
Spanish.  "La  razon  de  la  sinrazon  que  a  mi  razon  se  hace  de  tal 
manera  mi  razon  enflaquece,  que  con  razon  me  que  jo  de  la  vuestra 
fermosura " — i.e.,  "  The  cause  of  the  wrong,  which  is  done  to  my 
right,  so  weakens  my  reason,  that  with  reason  I  complain  of  your 
beauty."  The  Spaniard  punned  on  the  different  meanings  of  the 
word  razon.  Accurate  translation  does  not  diminish  the  likeness  to 
Sidney,  who  must  have  known  the  original. 


272      EUKOPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

We  must  not  push  the  comparison  too  far.  Sidney 
had  qualities  of  imagination  which  raised  him  far 
above  the  Spaniard,  and  he  never  rings  the  changes 
on  the  same  word  so  fatuously  as  Feliciano  and  other 
later  authors  of  Libros  de  Caballerias.  Yet  the  juggle 
on  the  two  forces  of  the  word  "  desire  "  is  quite  in  the 
Spanish  taste.  The  immediate  success  of  Don  Quixote 
in  England  may  be  explained  not  only  by  the  per- 
manent merits  of  Cervantes'  romance,  but  by  the  fact 
that  we  had  our  examples  of  the  literary  affectation 
which  he  attacked.  The  practice  of  labouring  the 
expression  of  sentiment,  of  repeating,  qualifying,  and 
counterbalancing,  would  inevitably  lead  to  long  strag- 
gling sentences,  while  it  was  also  a  direct  invitation 
to  the  frigid  conceits  in  which  Sidney  abounds. 

Stories  of  a  kind,  translations  from  or  adaptations 

of  the  Italians,  and  notably  Bandello,  with  imitations 

of  Euphues  and  the  Pastorals,  were  common 

Short  Stories.    .  ,      _       . 

m  Elizabethan  literature.  But,  perhaps 
because  it  suffered  from  the  overpowering  rivalry  of 
poetry  and  the  stage,  the  prose  tale  is  rarely  among  the 
good  things  of  the  time.  Greene,  Lodge,  and  Breton 1 
are  interesting  to  the  student,  but  it  cannot  be  said, 
with  any  measure  of  accuracy,  that  they  have  a  place 
in  the  history  of  the  English  novel.  They  were  part 
of  the  literary  production  of  their  time,  but  were 
mostly  imitation,  and  were  too  completely  forgotten, 
and  too  soon,  to  produce  any  effect.  An  exceptional 
interest  attaches  to  Nash's   Unfortunate,  Traveller,  to 

1  Greene  and  Breton  have  been  reprinted  by  Dr  Grosart.     Lodge's 
Euphues'  Golden  Legacy  is  in  the  Shakespeare's  Library,  vol.  ii. 


THE    ELIZABETHAN   PllOSE-WUITERS.  273 

which  attention  has  again  been  attracted  of  late.  It 
is  curious  that  a  story  which  has  considerable  intrinsic 
force  should  have  put  the  model  of  the  Novelet  de 
Picaros  before  English  readers  five  years  earlier  than 
the  publication  of  Gtizman  de  Alfarache  in  Spain,  and 
that  it  should  have  been  so  completely  forgotten  that 
when  this  model  was  again  introduced  among  us  by 
Defoe,  his  inspiration  came  from  Le  Sage.1 

Thomas  Nash  (1567-1601),  who  was  chiefly  known 

as  a  pamphleteer,  published  The  Unfortunate  Traveller 

in  1594.     It  is  difficult  to  read,  at  any  rate 

Nash's  '  J 

unfortunate  the  earlier  parts  of  the  story,  and  we  doubt 
that  the  author  had  seen,  if  not  the  original 
of  the  Lazarillo  de  Tormes,  then  at  any  rate  the  French 
version  of  Jean  Saugrain,  published  in  1561.  If  his 
work  is  quite  independent,  then  we  have  a  very  remark- 
able instance  of  exact  similarity  in  the  method  and 
spirit  of  two  writers  separated  from  one  another  in 
race  and  by  an  interval  of  nearly  half  a  century,  dur- 
ing which  the  first  had  enjoyed  a  wide  popularity. 
This  is  difficult  to  believe.  Nothing  can  be  more  like 
Lazarillo's  doings  than  the  tricks  which  Nash's  hero, 
Jack  Wilton,  plays  on  the  old  cider-selling  lord  and 
the  captain.  It  would  seem,  however,  that  the  time 
had  not  come  when  the  picaresque  method  was  to  be 
really  congenial  to  Englishmen.  Nash  wanders  away 
from  it  when  he  introduces  the  story  of  Surrey  and 

1  Complete  works  of  Thomas  Nash,  in  six  vols.  Dr  Grosart  in 
"The  Huth  Library,"  1883-1884.  Guzman  de  Alfarache  was  trans- 
lated into  English  by  Mabbe,  the  translator  of  the  Celestina,  in  1623, 
and  was  imitated  in  The  English  Rogue,  but  the  inspiration  for 
Colonel  Jack  and  Moll  Flanders  did  not  come  from  either. 

S 


2<T4      EUROPEAN    LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

the  Fair  Geraldine.  Yet  be  comes  back  to  it  with 
the  hero's  love-affairs  with  Diamante,  the  wife  of  a 
Venetian,  whom  he  meets  in  prison  at  Venice.  He 
keeps  to  it  very  close  when  Wilton  runs  away  with 
his  "  courtezan,"  and  gives  himself  out  to  be  the  Earl 
of  Surrey.  From  the  time  the  hero  and  Diamante 
reach  Eome  the  picaresque  tone  disappears,  and  Nash 
drops  into  familiar  Elizabethan  "  blood  and  thunder." 
With  the  inconsequence  of  his  time  he  gives  at  the 
end  a  defiant  last  dying  speech  and  confession  of  an 
Italian  malefactor,  who  bears  the  English  name  of 
Cutwolf.  Perhaps  a  certain  want  of  finish,  and  an 
air  there  is  about  it  of  being  hasty  work  done  to  make 
a  little  money,  injured  its  effect.  Yet  The  Unfortunate 
Traveller  did  show  Englishmen  a  way  they  were  to 
follow  in  the  future,  and  it  came  before  the  Guzman 
dc  Alfarache. 

Thomas  Nash  was  himself  perhaps  intrinsically  the 
most  able,  and  certainly  not  the  least  typical,  member 
Nash  and  the  of  a  whole  class  of  Elizabethan  men  of 
pamphleteers,  fetters.  He  was  born  at  Lowestoft,  "  a  son 
of  the  manse,"  in  1567,  and  was  educated  at  St  John's, 
Cambridge.  It  has  been  supposed  on  the  strength 
of  some  passages  in  his  writings  that  he  travelled 
abroad  in  his  youth,  though  he  does  not  write  in  his 
Unfortunate  Traveller  like  a  man  who  had  seen  Venice 
and  Rome.  He  was  settled  in  London  by  1588,  and 
lived  the  very  necessitous  life  of  a  man  of  letters 
who  depended  wholly  on  his  pen,  till  his  early  death 
in  1601.  It  was  the  misfortune  of  Nash  and  of  many 
of  his  contemporaries  that  they  were  born  too  soon 


THE    ELIZABETHAN   PllOSE-WMTEltS.  275 

for  the  magazine  or  newspaper.  His  work  consists 
mainly  of  matter  written  to  please  prevailing  tastes 
of  the  time.  Christ's  Tears  over  Jerusalem,  a  long, 
wordy,  and  decidedly  pretentious  collection  of  preach- 
ment, and  denunciation  of  the  sins  of  London,  his 
violent  quarrel  with  Gabriel  Harvey,  or  rather  with 
the  whole  Harvey  family,  which  was  rolled  out  in 
pamphlets  for  the  amusement  of  the  world,  his  col- 
lection of  ghost  stories,  The  Terrors  of  the  Night,  and 
what  he  called  Toys  for  Gentlemen,  which  are  lost,  and 
into  the  nature  of  which  it  is  perhaps  better  not  to 
inquire,  were  journalism  before  its  time.  His  Have 
with  you  to  Saffron  Walden,  a  piece  of  vigorous  literary 
horseplay  at  the  expense  of  Gabriel  Harvey,  is  an 
excellent  pamphlet  of  its  kind  —  in  the  kind  of  Mr 
Pott  and  Mr  Slurk;  while  his  burlesque  almanac, 
called  A  wonderful  strange  and  miraculous  Astronom- 
ical Prognostication,  though  undoubtedly  suggested  by 
Eabelais,  and  therefore  not  quite  original,  is  a  piece 
of  solemn  fun  worthy  of  the  irony  and  the  good  sense 
of  Swift.  Nash  had  ideas  of  style  which  sometimes 
led  him  into  involved  pomposity,  but  which  also  sup- 
plied him  with  an  effective,  though  blackguard,  con- 
troversial manner.  Nobody  was  a  greater  master  of 
loud  -  mouthed  bragging,  of  the  fashion  of  telling  an 
opponent  over  pages  of  repetition  of  the  dreadful 
things  you  are  going  to  do  with  him.  Consciously, 
or  unconsciously,  the  Elizabethans  were  great  be- 
lievers in  the  maxim  that  if  you  throw  mud  enough 
some  will  stick,  and  it  was  one  of  the  signs  of  their 
youth  and  primitive  simplicity  of  nature  that  when 


276      EUKOPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

they  were  angry  they  gave  way  to  the  instinct  which 
leads  men  to  scream  vituperation  and  curses,  with 
no  regard  to  their  application  to  the  subject.  To 
call  a  very  eminent  man  on  his  trial  for  treason 
— and  on  the  most  flimsy  evidence  too  —  "a  spider 
of  hell"  would  now  be  thought  not  less  silly  than 
ignoble.  But  that  is  what  Coke  called  Baleigh,  and 
it  is  a  very  fair  specimen  of  Elizabethan  satirical 
controversy.  Around  Nash  was  a  whole  class  of  men 
engaged  in  the  same  work  of  writing  little  stories — 
pastoral  or  euphuistic — and  pamphlets  moral,  satirical, 
political,  which  were  often  in  verse.  When  they 
dealt  with  the  low  life  of  London,  as  in  the  case  of 
Dekker  (1570  ?-1641  ?),  they  possess  a  certain  value 
as  illustrations  of  contemporary  manners.  It  is  curi- 
ous, when  their  bulk  and  their  popularity  are  con- 
sidered, that  no  London  printer  thought  of  bringing 
out  a  miscellany  of  them  at  regular  intervals.  He 
would  have  found  abundant  matter  ready  to  his  hand, 
and  the  magazine,  if  not  the  newspaper,  would  have 
been  founded  at  once. 

One  section  of  the  pamphlet  literature  of  the  time 
possesses  an  enduring  interest,  if  not  for  its  intrinsic 
Martin  value,  though  that  is  not  inconsiderable, 
MarpreMe.  ^hen  for  historical  reasons.  This  was  the 
famous  Martin  Marprelate  controversy,  which  was 
not  the  first  example  of  an  appeal  to  the  people  by 
the  press  on  religious  and  political  questions,  for  that 
had  been  done  on  the  Continent  by  the  Huguenots, 
but  was  the  earliest  effective  instance  among  us.  It 
grew  out  of  the  conflict  between  the  Church,  which 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   PROSE- WRITERS.  277 

was  fighting  for  uniformity  with  the  hearty  support 
of  the  queen — at  least  from  the  day  on  which  she 
found  her  power  sufficiently  established  to  allow  her 
to  disregard  the  Calvinist  princes  of  the  Continent 
— and  a  body  of  Englishmen  who  were  desirous  to 
adopt  the  Calvinist  Presbyterian  model.1  According 
to  our  view  the  question  was  one  to  be  argued  peace- 
fully, and  those  who  could  not  believe  the  same 
things  ought  to  have  agreed  to  differ.  That  was  not 
the  opinion  of  any  country,  or  of  either  side  in  the 
sixteenth  century.  The  Puritans  were  as  convinced 
of  the  need  for  uniformity  as  the  Church  or  the 
Spanish  Inquisition,  and  would  have  enforced  it  with 
no  sparing  hand  if  they  had  had  the  power.  They 
complained  quite  as  bitterly  of  the  toleration  which 
they  alleged  was  shown  to  the  Papists  (who  for  their 
part  cried  out  loudly  of  persecution),  as  of  the  sever- 
ities exercised  on  themselves.  As  the  power  was  with 
the  bishops,  those  who  would  not  conform  were  ex- 
pelled from  the  universities  and  from  their  livings. 
The  persecution  to  which  they  were  subjected  was 
enough  to  exasperate,  but  not  to  crush,  and  the  em- 
bittered Puritans  cast  about  for  a  weapon  to  use  against 
their  opponents.   The  pamphlet  lay  ready  to  their  hand.2 

1  The  Puritan  position  is  very  clearly  stated  in  John  Udall's 
Demonstration  of  Discipline.     Arber's  "  English  Scholar's  Library." 

2  Maskell's  History  of  the  Martin  Marprelate  Controversy,  1845, 
and  Mr  Arber's  "  Introduction,"  give  accounts  of  the  conflict  from 
very  different  points  of  view.  Mr  Arber  has  reprinted  Udall's 
Diotrephes  and  Demonstration  of  Discipline  in  his  "  English  Scholar's 
Library."  The  chief  among  the  succeeding  tracts  were  reprinted  in 
1845-1846  by  Petheram  under  the  title  of  Puritan  Discipline  Tracts. 


278      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

The  chief  dates  in  the  controversy  were  these.     In 
1587  Dr  John  Bridges,  Dean  of  Salisbury,  and  after- 
wards   Bishop    of    Oxford,    published    A 

Origin  of  the  , 

M'upreiate  Defence  of  the  Government  established  in 
the  Church  of  England  for  Ecclesiastical 
Matters,  in  answer  to  the  Puritan  controversialists 
Cartwright  and  Travers — a  very  long,  well-meant, 
and  learned,  but  lumbering  book.  Just  at  this  time 
the  Act  of  Uniformity  was  pressing  heavily  on 
the  Puritans.  There  were  two  who  were  especially 
aggrieved, — John  Udall,  who  had  been  expelled  from 
his  pulpit  at  Kingston  because,  as  his  friends  alleged, 
he  had  denounced  a  local  money-lender  from  whom 
the  archdeacon  of  the  diocese  wanted  to  borrow  £100 ; 
and  John  Penry,  an  able,  honest,  but  headlong  Welsh- 
man. In  or  about  March  1587  Penry  published  at 
Oxford  a  tract  with  a  long-winded  title,  which  is 
called  for  short  The  Equity  of  a  Humble  Supplication. 
It  was  an  address  to  Parliament  representing  the 
undeniably  neglected  state  of  the  Welsh  parishes. 
Unfortunately  for  Penry,  it  contained  one  passage 
which,  with  no  more  unfairness  than  was  usual  in 
State  prosecutions,  whether  conducted  for  the  king 
or  the  Long  Parliament,  in  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth centuries,  might  be  represented  to  be  treason- 
able. It  insinuated  plainly  that  the  queen  consented 
to  leave  Wales  in  religious  ignorance  and  immorality. 
The  press  was  then  under  censorship.  Only  two 
printers  were  allowed  out  of  London — one  at  Oxford, 
another  at  Cambridge.  In  London  the  number  was 
limited.    No  press  could  be  held  except  by  a  member  of 


THE   ELIZABETHAN    PROSE- WRITERS.  279 

the  Stationers'  Company,  and  any  one  could  be  confis- 
cated by  the  Warden,  over  whom  the  Bishop  of  London 
had  general  powers  of  control  as  censor.  Penry's 
treatise  was  suppressed,  and  he  was  in  great  peril. 

Here  then  were  two  men,  both  angry,  both  able, 
both  accustomed  to  appeal  directly  to  ignorant  audi- 
ences with  whom  it  was  necessary  to  make  things 
clear.  Both,  too,  were  bold  men,  and  honest  in  the 
sense  that  they  were  ready  to  risk  their  lives  for 
their  cause.  It  would  have  been  strange  if  they  had 
not  seized  on  the  pamphlet,  as  their  one  remaining 
weapon  against  the  bishops.  Udall  began  by  pub- 
lishing, in  April  1588,  his  dialogue  com- 

The  Diotrephes.  °  c  ° 

monly  called  Diotrephes.1  The  choice  or 
the  name  was  not  the  worst  stroke  of  satire  in  the 
controversy.  Diotrephes  was  that  person  mentioned  in 
the  ninth  verse  of  the  Third  Epistle  of  St  John  "  who 
loveth  to  have  the  pre-eminence  "  and  who  "  receiveth 
us  not."  It  was  a  great  belief  among  the  Puritans 
that  no  minister  should  have  authority  over  another, 
and  that  the  bishops  who  had  "  pre-eminence "  were 
"  antichrists  "  and  "  petty  popes."  The  dialogue  tells 
how  a  bishop,  a  papist,  a  money-lender,  and  an  inn- 
keeper were  all  rebuked  by  Paul,  a  preacher.  The 
usurer  alone  shows  signs  of  compunction,  while 
the   bishop   goes   off  thirsting  for  the  blood  of   the 

1  The  full  title  is,  ' '  The  state  of  the  Church  of  England,  laid  open 
in  a  Conference  between  Diotrephes  a  Bishop,  Tertullus  a  Papist, 
Demetrius  a  Usurer,  Pandochus  an  Inn-Keeper,  and  Paul  a  Preacher 
of  the  Word  of  God "  ;  with  quotations  from  Psalm  cxxii.  6  and 
Revelations  xiv.  9,  10.  The  titles  of  all  these  pamphlets  are  long, 
and  commonly  also  abusive. 


280      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

saints,  with  the  hearty  approval  of  the  papist,  and 
of  the  tavern-keeper,  who  explains  that  he  lives  by 
the  vices  of  his  neighbours,  and  is  like  to  be  ruined 
by  the  preaching  of  such  men  as  Paul.  This  pamphlet 
was  printed  by  John  Waldegrave,  a  Puritan  printer 
in  London,  who  was  deprived  of  his  licence  in  con- 
sequence. His  press  was  broken  up,  but  he  contrived 
to  conceal  a  fount  of  type.  A  printing-press  was 
smuggled  in  by  Penry,  and  a  campaign  of  unlicensed 
pamphlets  was  begun. 

The  details  are  obscure.  The  names  of  the  authors 
can  only  be  guessed  at.  The  controversy  lasted  from 
course  of  the  the  end  of  1588  to  the  end  of  1590.  At 
controversy.  first  the  puritans  swept  all  before  them. 
They  had  many  friends  at  Court,  where  indeed  their 
doctrine  that  the  bishops'  lands  should  be  taken  and 
given  to  gentlemen  who  could  serve  the  queen  was 
not  likely  "  to  want  for  favourable  or  attentive 
hearers."  Some  country  gentlemen  gave  them  help — 
notably  Sir  R.  Knightley  of  Fawsley,  in  Northampton- 
shire (always  a  Puritan  county),  and  Job  Throck- 
morton, who  appears  to  have  been  what  we  should 
now  call  a  bitter  anti-clerical.  The  press  was  con- 
cealed by  them  in  different  parts  of  the  country  till 
it  was  captured  by  the  Earl  of  Derby.  Penry  was 
probably  the  leader  of  the  fight  on  the  Puritan  side. 
It  began  by  the  publication  of  Martin  Marprelate's 
Epistle  directed  against  Dr  John  Bridges,  in  November 
1588.  This  drew  a  grave  Admonition  to  the  People 
of  England  from  Dr  Thomas  Cooper,  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester, in  or  about  January  1589.     Martin  followed 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   PROSE-WRITERS.  281 

up  his  attack  on  Dr  Bridges  by  the  Epitome,  printed 
before  the  Epistle,  but  not  issued  till  February  of 
1589.  Then  he  turned  on  the  Bishop  of  Winchester 
in  Hay  any  Work  for  Cooper} 

The  success  of  those  pamphlets  was  great.  A  well- 
known  story  tells  how  when  order  was  issued  that 
they  were  not  to  be  read,  the  Earl  of  Oxford  pulled 
one  of  them  out  of  his  pocket,  and  presented  it  to  the 
queen.  Solemn  "  admonitions  "  were  found  to  be  too 
awkward  in  such  a  conflict,  and  counter-pamphleteers 
were  called  in  on  the  bishops'  side.  This  part  of  the 
controversy  is  no  less  obscure  than  the  other.  It  has 
been  guessed  that  Lyly  and  Nash  struck  in  for  the 
bishops.  Both  have  been  credited  with  the  author- 
ship of  a  Pappe  with  a  Hatchet  and  An  Almond  for  a 
Parrot,  which  appeared  respectively  at  the  end  of 
1589  and  the  beginning  of  1590.  They  are  now 
generally  attributed  to  Lyly.  Then  third  parties 
struck  in  and  denounced  both  houses,  or  endeavoured 

1  The  titles  of  these  pamphlets  were  very  important  parts  of  them, 
and  this  may  be  quoted  as  an  example :  "  Hay  any  Work  for  Cooper, 
or  a  briefe  Pistle  directed  by  way  of  hublication  to  the  reverend 
Byshopps,  counselling  them  if  they  will  needs  be  barrelled  up,  for 
fear  of  smelling  in  the  nostrels  of  her  Magestie  and  the  State,  that 
they  would  use  the  advice  of  reverend  Martin,  for  the  providing  of 
their  Cooper.  Because  the  reverend  T.  C.  (by  which  mystical  letters 
is  meant  either  the  bouncing  Parson  of  Eastmcane,  or  Tom  Coakes 
his  Chaplaine)  hath  showne  himself  in  his  late  Admonition  to  the 
people  of  England  to  bee  an  unskilfull  and  deceytfull  tub-trimmer. 
Wherein  worthy  Martin  quits  himselfe  like  a  man,  I  warrant  you,  in 
the  modest  defences  of  his  self  and  his  learned  Pistles,  and  makes 
the  Cooper's  hoops  to  fly  off,  and  the  Bishops'  tubs  to  leake  out  of  all 
crye.  Penned  and  compiled  by  Martin  the  Metropolitane.  Printed 
in  Europe,  not  farre  from  some  of  the  Bounsing  Priests. 


282      EUROPEAN    LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

to  hush  the  clamour,  by  such  appeals  as  Plain  Perceval 
the  Peace-Maker  of  England, 

Although  they  naturally  fell  into  neglect  so  soon 
as  the  occasion  had  passed,  the  Martin  Marprelate 
pamphlets  are  of  great  importance  in  the  history 
of  English  literature.  The  euphuistic,  pastoral,  and 
other  tales  of  the  time  served  a  mere  fashion  of  the 
day,  and  are  forgettable  as  well  as  forgotten.  But 
when  Martin  Marprelate  published  his  unlicensed 
Epistle  he  set  an  example  which  has  been  excellently 
well  followed.  His  pamphlet  stands  at  the  head  of 
the  long  list  which  includes  the  Areopagitica,  the 
Anatomy  of  an  Equivalent,  the  Public  Spirit  of  the 
Whigs,  the  Shortest  Way  with  the  Dissenters,  the  Letters 
of  Junius,  the  Begicide  Peace,  and  it  is  not  absurd 
to  say  the  Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France, 
which  is  a  very  long,  great,  and  eloquent  pamphlet, 
but  a  pamphlet  still.  The  Epistle  and  its  immediate 
successors  were  not  unworthy  to  be  the  beginners  of 
so  vital  a  part  of  English  literature. 

"Si  nous  avions  1' ambition  d'etre  complet,  et  si 
c'etait  l'etre  que  de  tout  dire,"  it  would  be  necessary 
to  examine  all  the  pamphlets  in  detail.  But  many 
are  practically  inaccessible,  and  there  is  so  much 
repetition  among  them  that  they  can  be  adequately 
judged  by  selected  examples.  The  vital  examples  are 
those  which  set  the  model.  On  the  Puritan  side 
there  are  four, — the  Diotrephes,  which,  though  strictly 
speaking  antecedent  to  Martin,  gave  tone  and  marked 
the  lines,  the  Epistle,  the  Epitome,  and  the  Hay  any 
Work  for  Cooper.     The  Pappc  with  a  Hatchet  and  An 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   PROSE- WRITERS.  283 

Almond  for  a  Parrot  may  stand  as  examples  of  the 
anti-Martinist  pamphlets.  The  peacemakers  were  of 
less  account.  The  proposition  that  there  is  a  great 
deal  to  be  said  on  both  sides,  and  the  appeal  "  Why 
cannot  you  be  reasonable  ? "  may  be  full  of  good  sense, 
but  they  seldom  inspire  men  to  words  or  deeds  of  a 
decisive  character.  Looking  at  the  leading  things  on 
either  side,  one  sees  that  they  have  one  feature  in 
common.  They  are  extremely  unfair.  But  there  is  a 
great  difference  in  their  way  of  being  unjust,  and  on 
that  depends  their  literary  value.  The  distinction  is 
all  to  the  honour  of  the  Puritan  pamphlets.  Diotrephes 
shows  both  the  doctrine  and  the  spirit  of  the  writers. 
They  started  by  laying  down  the  law  to  the  effect  that 
whoever  exercises  pre-eminence  over  his  brethren  in 
the  ministry  is  an  "  antichrist "  and  a  "  petty  pope," 
and  that  no  church  office  not  explicitly  mentioned  in 
the  New  Testament  is  Christian.  Therefore  they 
endeavoured  to  discredit  the  bishops  by  showing  that 
they  habitually  did  such  acts  as  an  antichrist  and 
petty  pope  might  be  expected  to  do.  We  need  not 
stop  to  argue  that  this  was  unjust.  Of  course  it  was, 
but  from  the  literary  point  of  view  the  interesting 
question  is,  How  was  the  injustice  worded  ?  The 
Martin  Marprelate  men  had  a  firm  grip  of  the 
pamphlet  style.  The  ridicule  they  poured  on  the 
long-winded  sentences  of  Dr  Bridges  and  Bishop 
Cooper  shows  that  they  were  perfectly  well  aware 
of  the  advantages  of  a  simple  direct  manner.  Their 
own  sentences  are  brief,  and  stab  with  a  rapid  alert 
movement.     Their  abuse  is  furious,  but  it  is  seldom 


284      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

mere  scream.  "  Sodden-headed  ass  "  is  bad  language, 
but  if  it  is  ever  to  be  pardonable,  it  is  when  you  have 
caught  your  adversary  reasoning  badly,  and  this  the 
Martinists  at  least  tried  to  do.  It  was  indecent  to 
call  the  Bishop  of  Winchester  "  Mistress  Cooper's 
husband."  It  is  a  foul  hit  to  remind  your  opponent 
that  his  wife  is  a  profligate  termagant,  but  more 
ingenuity  is  needed  to  do  that,  by  naming  what  it 
would  have  been  more  fair  to  pass  in  silence,  than 
merely  to  bawl  the  slang  name  for  the  husband  of 
an  unfaithful  wife,  and  apply  it  to  a  whole  class  of 
men  at  large.  And  Martin  had  intelligence  enough 
to  understand  that  a  show  of  fairness  can  be  effec- 
tive. He  could  bring  himself  to  allow  that  if  John 
of  Canterbury  (Dr  Whitgift)  did  ever  marry,  he 
would  no  doubt  choose  a  Christian  woman. 

When  we  turn  to  the  anti  -  Martinist  pamphlets 
we  find  the  same  unfairness  of  spirit,  with  little  and 
often  none  of  the  cleverness  and  the  ingenious  form. 
If  Lyly  wrote  the  Pappe  with  a  Hatchet,  he  was 
in  a  better  place  when  he  was  in  Euphues  his 
lonely  cave  in  Silexedra.  The  elegance,  real  of  its 
artificial  kind,  is  gone,  and  in  place  of  it  we  get 
a  loud  vaunting  howl  of  abuse.  One -half  of  the 
qualification  of  the  "slating  reviewer"  was  wanting 
to  the  anti-Martinists.  They  hated  the  man,  but  they 
did  not  know  the  subject.  The  Royalist  general  who 
answered  Fairfax's  self-righteous  boasting  of  the  good 
discipline  of  the  Parliamentary  soldiers  by  telling  him 
that  the  Puritan  had  the  sins  of  the  Devil, "  which  are 
spiritual  pride  and  rebellion,"  struck  him  harder,  and 


THE  ELIZABETHAN   PKOSE- WRITERS.  285 

showed  a  finer  wit  than  all  the  pamphleteers  whom  it 
has  been  in  my  power  to  see.  They  miss  his  vulnerable 
points,  they  bellow  bad  language  and  accusations  of 
the  kind  of  misconduct  from  which  the  Puritan  was  as 
free  as  the  universal  passions  of  humanity  permitted. 
The  difference  between  the  two  may  be  quite  fairly 
put  this  way.  The  worst  calumny  of  the  Martinists 
can  be  quoted,  but  the  anti- Martinists  are  naught 
when  they  are  not  using  language  which  is  nearly  as 
unquotable  as  any  written  by  the  worst  scribblers  of 
the  Eestoration.  The  least  nauseous  passages  are 
those  in  which  these  defenders  of  the  Church  gloat 
over  the  whips,  branding-irons,  and  mutilating  knife 
of  Ball  the  Hangman.  Now  Martin  rarely  goes  beyond 
threatening  the  bishops  with  a  premunire,  and  when 
he  does  he  stops  at  a  "hemp  collar."  The  Martin 
Marprelate  men  were  fighting  in  a  now  obsolete  cause, 
in  a  style  which  has  manifest  faults  of  taste  and 
temper.  But  they  were  on  the  right  path,  they  set 
the  example  of  pamphlet  controversy  from  which  the 
its  place  in  iu-  press  was  to  come  in  time,  and  they  did  it 
crary  history.  |n  a  way  whicn  only  needed  amending 
The  author  of  the  Anatomy  of  an  Equivalent  had 
learnt  that  when  you  have  proved  your  opponent  to 
be  "a  sodden -headed  ass,"  it  is  superfluous  to  pelt 
him  with  the  name.  Yet  he  was  truly  the  successor 
of  Martin,  while  the  line  of  the  anti-Martinists  ended 
in  Ned  Ward. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  Martinists  were  routed 
by  Lyly  and  Nash,  which  is  certainly  unfair  to  the 
Earl  of  Derby,  and  not  quite  just  to  Ball  the  Hangman. 


286      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

As  far  as  they  were  routed  by  literary  weapons,  the 
honour  of  defeating  them  is  due  to  a  very  different 
hand.  The  doctrine  of  the  Puritans  was  confuted 
in  the  Ecclesiastical  Polity  of  Richard  Hooker  —  the 
greatest  masterpiece  of  Elizabethan  prose.1  Hooker 
was  born  at  Heavitree,  near  Exeter,  in 
1553.  His  family  was  poor,  and,  like  many 
of  his  contemporaries,  he  was  educated  by  the  kind- 
ness of  patrons.  Dr  Jewel,  the  Bishop  of  Salisbury, 
and  Edwin  Sandys,  then  Bishop  of  London,  and  after- 
wards Archbishop  of  York,  successively  protected  him 
at  Oxford.  He  was  tutor  to  Sandys'  sons.  If  Isaac 
Walton  was  correctly  informed,  he  was  somewhat 
tamely  annexed  by  a  scheming  landlady  as  husband 
for  her  daughter.  He  had  to  resign  his  fellowship 
upon  his  marriage  in  1584,  and  was  appointed  to  the 
living  of  Drayton  Beauchamp,  in  Buckinghamshire. 
In  the  following  year  he  was  appointed  Master  of  the 
Temple.  Here  he  became  widely  known  by  a  contro- 
versy with  the  Puritan  Walter  Travers,  conducted  on 
both  sides  with  more  moderation  than  was  usual  in 
those  times.  After  holding  the  Mastership  for  seven 
years,  he  resigned  it  for  a  living  in  Wiltshire.  He 
died  at  Bishopsbourne,  near  Canterbury,  in  1600. 

In  the  chapter  of  his  Constitutional  History  which 
deals  with  Elizabeth's  laws  against  the  Non- Con- 
formists, Mr  Hallam  has  written:  "But  while  these 
scenes  of  pride  and  persecution  on  one  hand,  and  of 
sectarian  insolence  on  the  other,  were  deforming  the 
bosom  of  the  English  Church,  she  found  a  defender  of 

1  Works  of  Richard  Hooker.     Oxford,  1841. 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   PR0SE-W1UTERS.  287 

her  institutions  in  one  who  mingled  in  these  vulgar 
controversies  like  a  knight  of  romance  among  caitiff 
brawlers,  with  arms  of  finer  temper  and  worthy  to  be 
proved  in  a  nobler  field."  If  this  sentence  is  to  be 
understood  to  mean — as  from  the  context  it  perhaps 
must  —  that  Hooker  mingled  in  the  Martin  Mar- 
Thc  Ecciesi-  prelate  conflict,  it  is  inaccurate.  He  an- 
asticai  Polity.  swere(}  Cartwright  and  Travers,  as  Dr 
Bridges  had  done,  and  whatever  may  be  said  of  these 
men  it  would  be  silly  to  call  them  caitiff  brawlers, 
while  it  would  be  difficult  to  say  what  nobler  field 
Hooker  could  have  found  for  his  arms  than  that  in 
which  he  justified  the  faith  and  religious  practices  of 
Englishmen.  Yet  Mr  Hallam  has  fairly  singled  out 
the  predominant  characteristic  of  Hooker.  There  is 
something  knightly  about  him,  something  of  the 
chivalry  of  Sir  Galahad.  He  could  strike  with  telling 
force,  as  he  does  in  the  one  passage  of  fine  scorn 
devoted  to  the  jeering  Puritan  pamphlets  —  beside 
which  all  the  scolding  of  their  proper  opponents  is 
mere  brutal  noise.  Yet  what  prevails  with  him  so 
completely  that  the  exceptions  are  hardly  noticeable 
is  the  moderation  which  has  earned  him  his  name  of 
"  Judicious."  It  is  not  the  easy  moderation  of  one 
who  does  not  care  much,  but  of  a  man  who  was  very 
convinced,  very  earnest,  and  also  very  good.  The 
Ecclesiastical  Polity  is  not  chiefly  valuable  as  a  piece 
of  reasoning.  It  has  for  one  thing  not  reached  us 
complete.  The  first  four  books,  which  must  have  been 
begun  while  he  was  at  the  Temple,  were  published  in 
1594.     The  long  fifth  book  appeared  in  1597.     The 


288      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

three,  which  make  up  the  total  number  of  eight,  were 
left  unfinished  at  his  death,  and  passed  into  careless, 
if  not  unfaithful,  hands.  But  the  five  undoubted 
books  were  enough  to  do  Hooker's  work  for  the 
Church  of  England,  and  they  did  not  do  it  by  pre- 
senting his  readers  with  such  a  closely  reasoned  and 
compact  system  as  they  might  have  found  in  the 
Institutions  of  Calvin.  Englishmen  have  never  cared 
much  for  consistency  of  system.  It  was  enough  for 
them  that  Hooker  justified  usages,  ceremonies,  and 
forms  of  Church  government  to  which  they  were 
accustomed,  against  the  "Disciplinarians"  who  con- 
demned them  for  wanting  the  express  authority  of 
the  New  Testament,  by  proving  that  they  had  pre- 
vailed among  pious  men  of  former  times,  were  in 
themselves  innocent,  and  could  therefore  be  accepted 
by  sincere  Christians  as  convenient,  pious,  and  of  good 
example,  even  if  they  had  no  "divine  right,"  when 
they  were  imposed  by  authority.  In  substance  this 
was  no  new  doctrine.  Her  Majesty  in  Council  had 
been  saying  as  much  for  years,  and  so  had  Whitgift 
and  Bridges,  and  all  the  defenders  of  the  Establish- 
ment. But  what  they  did  by  dry  injunction  or 
laboured  scholastic  argument,  Hooker  did  by  per- 
suasion, by  pathos,  and  by  noble  rhetoric.  The  criti- 
cism that  he  sometimes  gives  eloquence  where  he 
ought  to  give  argument,  does  not  go  far  when  the 
purpose  of  his  book  is  allowed  for.  It  was  not  by 
logic  that  God  elected  to  save  His  Church  in  former 
centuries,  nor  yet  in  the  sixteenth.  In  Hooker's  case, 
as  fully  as  in  the  case  of  any  poet,  literature  vindi- 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   PROSE- WRITERS.  289 

cated  itself.  The  beauty  of  the  style,  always  essenti- 
ally pure  English  in  spite  of  an  occasional  Latin  turn 
of  the  sentence,  is  the  great  merit  of  the  Ecclesiastical 
Polity.  The  famous  eloquent  passages  arise  naturally 
because  they  always  correspond  to  the  greater  pathos, 
or  sanctity,  or  the  deeper  passion  of  that  part  of  his 
subject  which  he  is  handling  at  the  moment.  The 
Englishman  stood  between  the  Galvinist  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  Eoman  Catholic  on  the  other,  both 
appealing  to  him  on  religious  grounds.  There  was  a 
real  danger  that  his  own  Church  would  find  nothing 
to  tell  him  except  that  decency  was  decent,  that  he 
had  better  not  trouble  himself  about  debatable  matters 
he  would  never  understand,  and  that  he  must  obey  the 
Queen.  If  this  was  all  it  could  fin#  to  say,  English- 
men who  were  concerned  about  religion — the  majority 
of  thinking  men,  whether  ignorant  or  learned — would 
assuredly  have  gone  either  to  Geneva  or  to  Eome, 
while  the  unthinking  mass  alone  would  have  remained 
to  the  Church.  In  that  case  it  would  have  gone  down 
for  ever  in  the  Civil  War.  From  that  fate  it  was 
saved  by  Hooker. 


290 


CHAPTEK    X. 

FRANCE.      POETRY   OF   THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

THE  PLEH.DE  —  EONSARD  —  THE  LESSER  STARS  —  '  THE  DEFENSE  ET 
ILLUSTRATION  DE  LA  LANGUE  FRAN£AISE  ' — THE  WORK  OF  RONSARD 
— HIS  PLACE  IN  POETRY — JOACHIM  DU  BELLAT — REMI  BELLEAU — 
BAIF  —  DU  BARTAS  —  D'aUBIGNE  —  THE  DRAMATIC  WORK  OF  THE 
PLEIADE — JODEDtte  —  GREVIN  AND  LA  TAILLE  —  MONTCHRESTIEN  — 
THE  COMEDY  —  '  LA  RECONNUE  '  —  CAUSES  OF  FAILURE  OF  EARLY 
DRAMATIC  LITERATURE. 

The  French  literature  of  the  later  Renaissance  is 
divided,  almost  as  it  were  by  visible  mechanical  bar- 
riers, from  what  had  gone  before,  and  from  what  was 
to  come  after.  The  distinction  is  less  marked  in 
prose,  but  even  here  it  is  real,  while  the  poetry  of  the 
time  is  the  work  of  a  school,  with  a  creed  and  a  set 
of  formulas  all  its  own.  It  has  ever  been  much  the 
custom  of  the  French,  whether  in  politics,  in  art,  or 
in  literature,  to  move  altogether,  and  to  make  a  clean 
sweep.  Every  new  school  rejects  its  predecessor 
with  more  or  less  indiscriminate  contempt,  becomes 
a  tyranny  in  its  turn,  and  is,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  re* 
belled  against,  and  destroyed.  The  process  has  never 
been   shown   more   fully  and  with   fewer  disturbing 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   291 

elements  than  in  the  history  of  the  Pleiade.  Exactly 
in  the  middle  of  the  century  a  small  body  of  young 
writers  took  possession  of  French  poetry,  dismissed 
the  forms  of  their  elders  as  "  grocery  "  {tpicerics),  just 
as  the  romantic  writers  of  this  century  labelled  the 
classic  style  as  "  wig "  (perruquc),  and  ruled  without 
opposition,  till  one  fine  day  they  were  scored  out  by 
the  equally  irreverent,  though  more  pedantic,  and  less 
generous  pen  of  Malherbe. 

The  poets  of  the  Pleiade  are  entitled  to  the  respect 

of  the  historian  of  literature  for  several  reasons,  and 

to  his  gratitude  for  this,  that  they  formed 

The  Pleiade.  °  .  .   ,   ..  * 

a  compact  body  which  he  need  be  at  no 
trouble  to  disentangle,  because  they  stood  deliberately 
apart,  or  to  define,  because  they  did  the  work  for  him, 
by  publishing  an  exhaustive  manifesto  of  their  prin- 
ciples. There  is  nowhere  a  better  example  of  that 
situation  nette  which  the  French  love.  The  Pleiade 
knew  its  own  mind,  and  what  it  wanted  to  do.  More- 
over, if  it  did  not  always  achieve  its  purpose,  at  least 
it  knew  how  the  work  was  to  be  done.  Some  slight 
doubt  exists  as  to  the  names  of  the  seven  forming  the 
original  constellation.  The  most  orthodox  list  gives 
Daurat,  Ptonsard,  Du  Bellay,  Belleau,  Ba'if,  Jodelle,  and 
Pontus  de  Thyard,  but  another  of  less  authority  re- 
places the  sixth  and  seventh  by  Scevole  de  Sainte 
Marthe  and  Muret.  It  does  not  matter  which  of  the 
two  is  taken,  since  both  include  the  important  names. 
Jodelle  has  a  notable  place  in  French  dramatic  litera- 
ture, but  the  drama  is  subordinate  in  the  history  of 
the  Pleiade.     Pontus  de  Thyard  (1521-1603),  though 


292      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

the  first-born  and  the  last  survivor  of  the  fellowship, 
is  not  an  essential  member,  and  may  pass  behind  his 
leaders,  Eonsard,  Du  Bellay,  Belleau,  and  Baif. 

All   these   poets   were    by    birth    gentlemen,   and 

several  of  them  were  highly  connected.      Pierre  de 

Bonsard,  the  master  of  them  all,  and  the 

Konsard.  . 

"  Prince  of  Poets  of  his  century,  not  only 
in  the  opinion  of  his  countrymen,  but  by  the  consent 
of  many  foreigners,  was  the  son  of  the  maitre  cChotel 
(steward  of  the  household)  of  Francis  I.  He  was 
born  at  Yendome  in  1524,  and  entered  the  service 
of  the  Duke  of  Orleans  as  page.  When  James  V. 
brought  back  his  second  wife,  Mary  of  Lorraine,  to 
Scotland,  Bonsard  followed  them,  and  spent  thirty 
months  in  their  service,  returning  to  France  by  way 
of  England.  When  hors  de  page,  he  was  attached 
to  the  suite  of  more  than  one  ambassador.  Among 
them  was  Lazare  de  Baif,  whose  natural  son,  Jean 
Antoine  de  Baif,  was  receiving  his  education  under 
the  care  of  the  humanist,  Jean  Dorat,  Daurat,  or 
D'Aurat  (1508-1588).  Bonsard  showed  a  taste  for 
reading  from  his  early  years,  and  if  he  rejected  the 
forms  of  Clement  Marot,  it  was  not  without  know- 
ing them.  An  illness,  which  may  have  been  the  result 
of  his  sufferings  during  a  shipwreck  on  the  coast  of 
Scotland,  left  him  deaf  in  1546.  He  now,  and  as  it 
would  seem  not  unwillingly,  left  the  service  of  the 
Court,  and  betook  himself  to  study  at  the  college  of 
Coqueret  under  the  direction  of  Daurat,  and  in  com- 
pany of  Jean  Antoine  de  Baif.  Bemi  Belleau  was  a 
pupil    at   the  same  college.     An  accidental  meeting 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   293 

between  Ronsarcl  and  Joachim  du  Bellay  added  this 
latter  to  the  fellowship.  The  four,  Daurat 
advising  and  approving,  undertook  to  rev- 
olutionise French  poetry,  and  they  did  it.  The  later 
dates  in  their  biographies  may  be  briefly  noted. 
Konsard  enjoyed  great  favour  at  Court,  earned  not 
only  by  admiration  of  his  poetry,  but  by  his  singularly 
amiable  personal  character.  On  the  death  of  Charles 
IX.,  himself  a  fair  verse-writer,  Eonsard  retired  to  the 
Abbey  of  Croix  Val,  of  which  he  was  lay  abbot,  and 
died  in  1584.  Semi  Belleau  (1528-1577)  passed  a 
peaceful  life  in  the  service  of  the  house  of  Lorraine, 
and  was  carried  to  his  grave  by  brother  poets.  Joachim 
du  Bellay  (1525  ?-1560),  member  of  a  very  distin- 
guished family  of  soldiers  and  statesmen,  some  of 
whom  made  their  mark  in  French  memoir  literature, 
accompanied  his  kinsman  the  Cardinal  du  Bellay  to 
Rome,  but  fell  out  of  favour  and  returned  to  France. 
He  was  of  weak  health,  and  appears  to  have  suffered 
from  family  troubles.  He  died  suddenly  of  apoplexy 
at  the  age  of  thirty-six.  Jean  Antoine  de  Barf  (1532- 
1589)  had  a  busy  life  in  public  affairs,  and  suffered 
changes  of  fortune.  Characteristically  enough  he 
founded  an  early  French  Academy,  for  which  he  re- 
ceived a  patent  from  Charles  IX.  in  1570.1  It  lasted 
for  several  years. 

The  Defense  et  Illustration  de  la  Langue  Frangaise, 
which  is  the  manifesto  of  the  school,  was  written  by 

1  Sainte  -  Beuve,  Tableau  historique  et  critique  de  la  Poesie  Fran- 
caise  et  du  Theatre  Francais  au  XVIme-  Steele.  Le  Seizieme  Siicle 
en  France.     Par  MM.  Darnisteter  et  Hatzfeld. 


294      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

Joachim  du  Bellay.  It  was  published  in  February 
1550,  according  to  the  modern  calendar, 
illustration  de  but  1549  in  the  old,  which  made  the  year 
laLangue  begin  on  Lady  Day.  If  Boileau,  before 
dismissing  Eonsard  and  his  friends  so  con- 
temptuously, had  taken  the  trouble  to  read  this 
treatise,  he  would  have  learnt  that  it  was  not  their 
intention  to  speak  Latin  and  Greek  in  French,  or 
to  make  a  new  art  after  their  own  fashion.  Their 
purpose  was  very  different.  It  was  their  aim  to 
write  good  French,  but  to  use  all  the  resources  of  the 
language  in  order  to  reproduce  the  forms  of  the  great 
classic  literatures — the  Epic,  the  Drama,  the  Satire, 
the  Ode,  and  the  Italian  models — the  Canzone  and  the 
Sonnet.  They  held,  and  not  unjustly,  that  the  French 
verse  of  Marot's  school  was  poor  in  rhythm,  and 
"frivolous."  It  had  come  to  be  satisfied  with  turn- 
ing out  nine  insignificant  verses,  if  it  can  put  "le 
petit  mot  pour  rire  "  into  the  tenth.  A  sham  Middle 
Age  was  lingering  on — the  mere  remnants  and  echo 
of  the  Roman  de  la  Rose  allegory.  Du  Bellay  speaks 
of  the  Roman  and  of  its  authors  —  Guillaume  de 
Lorris  and  Jean  de  Meung — with  respect.  He  was 
sufficiently  an  admirer  of  French  mediaeval  literature 
to  quote  the  stories  of  Lancelot  as  fit  to  be  used  for 
epic.  But  he  insists  that  the  prosaic  language  used 
by  the  school  of  Marot  was  not  adequate  for  poetry, 
and  that  a  new  poetic  tongue  must  be  formed,  which 
could  only  be  done  by  the  ardent  study  of  Greek  and 
Latin.  What  the  student  learnt  he  was  to  assimilate 
and  make  French.     There  was  nothing  in  this  which 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   295 

was  not  at  once  inevitable  when  the  immense  influ- 
ence of  the  classic  literatures  in  that  generation  is 
allowed  for,  and  was  not  also  in  itself  sound.  It 
was  a  misfortune  that  the  Pleiade  cut  itself  off  so 
completely  from  the  mediaeval  tradition;  and  there 
is  unanswerable  force  in  Sainte-Beuve's  criticism  that 
if  Eonsard  and  his  school  were  looking  for  ipieerie$t 
they  had  as  good  cause  to  condemn  the  sonnet  as 
the  "rondeau"  or  the  "ballade."  Yet  it  was  not 
the  great  mediaeval  literature  which  they  had  before 
them.  That  was  already  forgotten.  They  did  a  work 
by  which  the  seventeenth  century,  while  treating  them 
with  contempt,  profited.  If  they  did  not  achieve  all 
they  aimed  at,  it  was  because  no  one  among  them — 
not  even  Eonsard — was  a  man  of  the  first  rank  of 
poetic  genius,  not  because  their  principles  and  method 
were  at  fault.  And  there  is  this  to  be  said — that  if 
some  of  their  followers  fell  into  extravagances  of  lan- 
guage (the  poets  of  the  Pleiade  proper  and  their  con- 
temporaries were  not,  at  least  in  their  earlier  years, 
open  to  the  reproach),  they  did  not  impoverish  the 
French  tongue.  They  did  not  reduce  it,  when  used 
for  literary  purposes,  to  colourless  general  terms ;  nor 
did  they  tie  the  Alexandrine  into  sets  of  two  lines 
by  making  a  meaningless  rule  that  the  sense  was 
never  to  be  carried  over  into  a  third.  Their  revo- 
lution was  more  fruitful,  and  less  merely  destructive, 
than  Malherbe's. 

Although  Du  Bellay  appeared  as  the  spokesman  of 
the  school,  he  was  instantly  eclipsed  by  Eonsard. 
The  Odes  of  the  "  Prince  of  Poets  "  were  published 


296      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

in  1550,  at  about  the  same  time  .as  the  Sonnets  to 
tu  work  of  Olive  (an  anagram  of  Mile,  de  Yiole)  of 
Ronsard.  jju  j>eiiav  He  was  at  once  accepted  as  the 
poet  of  his  time,  and  his  supremacy  endured  till  his 
death  without  question,  ex€ept  for  one  moment  in  his 
later  years  when  it  appeared  to  be  shaken  by  the 
popularity  of  Du  Bartas.  The  Amours  de  Cassandre 1 
followed  in  1552,  with  a  second  edition  in  the  follow- 
ing years,  which  contains  the  famous  "  Mignonne  allons 
voir  si  la  rose."  In  1555  appeared  the  Hymns,  and 
in  1560  he  collected  all  he  had  as  yet  written  in  a 
complete  edition  at  the  request  of  Queen  Mary, 
who  was  his  ardent  admirer,  as  was  also  Queen 
Elizabeth.  Between  1561  and  1574  he  was  attached 
to  the  service  of  Charles  IX.,  who  treated  him  with 
kindness,  and  whose  "  virtues "  he  celebrated,  even 
after  his  death,  in  terms  which  sound  strange  to  us. 
As  Court  poet  he  wrote  "  by  command,"  which  is  not 
a  favourable  source  of  inspiration.  It  was  to  please  the 
king  that  he  wrote  his  fragmentary  epic.  Franciade, 
which  his  most  sincere  admirers  have  to  confess  is 
"  dull."  It  had  the  misfortune  to  be  published  on  the 
eve  of  the  Saint  Bartholomew.  Yet  his  Discours  des 
Mis&res  du  Temps  (1562)  and  his  Remonstrance  au  Peuple 
de  France  (1563)  belong  to  these  years,  and  they  were 
drawn  from  him  by  the  shocking  miseries  of  the 
time.  Henri  III.,  though  generous  to  some,  was  less 
a  favourer  of  poets  than  his  brother,  and  Eonsard 
was  free  to  express  himself  in  the  lyrics  and  melan- 

1  (Euvres    completes    de  P.    de  Ronsard,   edited    by    M.    Prosper 
Blanchemain.      Bibliotheque  Elzevirienne,  1858. 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   297 

choly  sonnets  of  his  last  years.  At  the  very  end, 
when  his  health  was  broken  down  and  his  mind 
affected,  he  made  an  unfortunate  and  negligible 
revision  of  his  work,  published  in  1584. 

It  is  perhaps  some  excuse  for  the  sweeping  con- 
demnation  of   Eonsard   by  Malherbe   that   even  the 
ins  place  in    Romantic  reaction  of  this  century  has  not 
p°etry-  succeeded  in  regaining  favour  for  the  part 

of  the  poetry  of  the  chief  of  the  Pleiade  for  which  he 
was  most  admired  by  his  contemporaries,  and  of  which 
he  was  most  proud.  In  the  vigorous  sonnet  beginning 
"  lis  ont  menty,  d'Aurat,"  written  against  Du  Bartas 
— or  at  least  against  his  admirers — Eonsard  appealed 
to  his  own  Francus,  and 

"  Les  neuf  belles  sceurs 
Qui  tremperent  mes  vers  clans  leurs  graves  douceurs," 

as  witnesses  that  he  was  not  less  than  the  author  of 
the  Semaine.  Now  it  is  precisely  this  part  of  his 
poetry,  that  in  which  he  would  be  an  epic  poet,  or 
wear  the  Pindaric  robe,  which  is  dead,  and  can  by  no 
effort  be  brought  to  life  again.  When  Malherbe  con- 
demned it  he  passed  a  sentence  which  no  later  admirer 
of  the  poetry  of  the  sixteenth  century  has  been  able 
to  reverse.  The  gross  error  of  the  later  school  was 
that  it  did  not  make  allowance  for  the  passing  and 
temporary  fashion  of  imitation  of  the  classic  models, 
and  did  shut  its  eyes  to  the  fact  that,  besides  Eonsard 
le  Pindarique,  there  was  Eonsard  the  author  of 
"  Mignonne  allons  voir  si  la  Rose,"  and  the  beautiful 
sonnet  to  Helene,  "  Quand  tu  seras  bien  vieille."     This 


298      EURCTEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

Eonsard  was  a  very  genuine,  and  elegant,  if  not  very 
great,  poet.  That  he  would  not  himself  have  been 
pleased  to  know  that  he  was  to  be  admired  for  these 
themes,  and  not  for  his  Franciadc  and  his  Pindaric 
ode  to  Michel  de  L'Hospital,  is  possible.  Yet  his 
erroneous  estimate  of  the  relative  values  of  different 
parts  of  his  work  does  not  affect  his  real  glory,  which 
is  that  he  raised  French  verse  from  the  condition  of 
prose  tagged  with  rhyme,  into  which  it  had  fallen, 
gave  it  a  new  melody,  and  breathed  into  it  a  new 
poetic  spirit.  He  did  for  France  what  Surrey  and 
Wyatt  began,  and  Spenser  and  Sidney  completed  for 
us,  what  the  Spanish  poets  of  the  school  of  Boscan 
and  Garcilaso  attempted  for  Castilian.  He  set  up  a 
model  of  sweeter  and  statelier  measures,  and  he  brought 
the  ancient  classic  inspiration  out  of  pure  scholarship 
into  literature.  If  he  had  far  less  power  than  his 
English  contemporaries,  he  was  infinitely  more  original 
than  the  Spaniards.  There  is  no  mere  slavish  repeti- 
tion of  foreign  models  in  him,  but  the  constant  and 
successful  effort  to  give  a  genuine  French  equivalent, 
which  is  quite  another  thing. 

The  followers  of  "  a  prince  "  are  inevitably  eclipsed 
by  their  leader,  and  that  is  the  more  likely  to  be  the 
joacum  du    case  when  a  body  of  poets  are  memorable 
Beiiay.  for   their    accomplishment,    their    general 

poetic  spirit,  their  scholarship — for  anything,  in  short, 
rather  than  for  power.  Power,  indeed,  is  not  what 
can  be  attributed  to  the  poets  of  the  PMiade.  When 
it  appears  among  the  younger  men  it  is  in  the  verse 
of  the  Huguenots  Du  Bartas  and  D'Aubigno,  in  whom 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   299 

there  is  again  less  scholarly  accomplishment.  Among 
the  other  poets  of  Bonsard's  school,  from  his  brother 
in  literature  Joachim  du  Bellay  down  to  his  last 
follower  Jean  Bertaut  (1532-1611),  the  best  is  com- 
monly what  is  melancholy  or  what  is  gay  and  graceful. 
Joachim  du  Bellay 1  published  his  first  volume,  which 
contained  the  Sonnets  to  Olive,  the  Mtcsagnceomctchie, 
or  "Battle  between  the  Muses  and  Ignorance,"  and 
some  Odes  in  1550,  a  little  before  Eonsard.  The 
sonnet  had  already  been  written  in  Trench  by  Mellin 
de  Saint  -Gelais,  but  Du  Bellay  claimed,  and  was 
allowed,  the  honour  of  having  first  u  acclimatised  "  it. 
The  model  adopted  and  constantly  followed  in  France 
was  the  Petrarchan.  His  most  memorable  work  was 
born  of  his  new  experiences  in  Italy.  It  was  there 
that  he  wrote  the  Antiquite's  de  Borne — the  sonnets 
translated  by  Spenser  under  the  name  of  The  Ruins — 
his  Regrets,  in  which  he  gives  expression  to  his  disgust 
at  the  papal  capital  and  his  home-sickness,  and  his 
Jeux  Rustiques,  inspired  by  the  Latin  poetry  of  Nava- 
giero,  the  Venetian  who  advised  Boscan  to  write  in  the 
Italian  manner.  Du  Bellay  himself  wrote  Latin  verse. 
The  Jeux  Rustiques,  published  at  the  same  time  as  the 
Regrets,  1558,  contain  his  best  known  pieces,  the  per- 
fectly gay  and  graceful  Vanneur  ("  the  Winnower "), 
and  the  lines  to  Venus,  in  which  he  has  done  all  there 
was  to  be  done  with  that  very  artificial  product  the 
pastoral  poetry  of  learned  poets.  Withal  Du  Bellay 
carried  beak  and  claws.  He  was  praised  for  having 
put  the  epigram  into  the  sonnet,  and  there  are  cer- 

1  Ed.  Marty-Laveaux.     2  vols. 


300      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

tainly  few  better  examples  how  that  can  be  achieved 
than  in  the  numbers  of  the  Regrets  which  contrast  the 
outward  courtesy  and  dignity  with  the  inward  treason 
and  meanness  of  the  Eoman  court.  Du  Bellay  is 
more  uniformly  excellent  than  Eonsard,  but  the  bulk 
of  his  work  is  far  smaller  and  he  tried  less. 

The  gentil  Belleau  was  a  less  strong  man  than  Du 

Bellay,  and  it  is  to  the  honour  of  his  critical  faculty 

that  he  recognised  the  truth.     He  left  the 

Bemi  Belleau.  .  . 

ode,  Pindaric  or  Horatian,  alone,  and  de- 
voted himself  either  to  translation  (he  translated 
Anacreon)  or  to  poetry  of  the  style  of  the  Jeux 
Bustiques.  His  Bergerie,  1565,  and  his  DeuxUme 
JournSe  de  la  Bergerie,  1572,  are  of  this  order,  while 
his  Amours  et  Nouveciu  Bschanges  des  jpierres  pre'eieuses 
vertus  et  propr 'ie'te's  d'icelles  is  an  imitation,  or  adapta- 
tion, of  Ovid's  Metamorphoses  and  the  poets  of  the 
Greek  decadence,  based  on  a  book  about  the  properties 
of  precious  stones,  written  by  a  Bishop  of  Eennes  in 
the  eleventh  century.  Our  own  Euphuists  must  have 
gone  to  the  same  source.  The  first  Bergerie  contains 
the  really  delightful 

"  Avril  l'honneur  et  des  Bois 
Et  des  Mois," 

which  ranks  with  Du  Bellay 's  Vanneur  as  the  master- 
piece of  the  style.  It  is  a  curious  comment  on  the 
theory  which  accounts  for  literature  by  the  "circum- 
stances "  that  all  this  light  verse  about  graceful  things 
belongs  to  the  years  of  the  conspiracy  of  Amboise, 
when  the  streets  of  that  town  were,  in  the  vehement 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   301 

words  of  Eegnier  de  la  Planche,  tapestried  with  the 
corpses  of  executed  Huguenots,  and  while  the  wars  of 
Religion,  the  Saint  Bartholomew,  and  the  League 
were  deluging  France  in  blood. 

Like  Belleau,  J.  B.  de  Ba'if  was  a  translator.  His  ver- 
sions of  the  Antigone,  and  of  the  Eunuchus  of  Terence, 
were  published  in  1565,  and  other  transla- 
tions of  Greek  and  Latin  drama  were  left 
unpublished  by  him  at  his  death,  and  have  been  lost. 
Ba'if  was  also  the  author  of  a  comedy  imitated  from 
Plautus,  Le  Brave,  acted  in  1567.  His  poetry  includes 
the  Bavissement  d'Europe  and  Les  Amours  de  Mdine, 
1552.  Les  Amours  de  Francine,  1555 — these  are  sonnet 
cycles  —  the  Meteor es  of  1567,  his  iJtrennes  de  Foesie 
Francaise,  1574,  and  the  Mimes,  1576.  Ba'if,  who  was 
more  scholar  than  poet,  took  the  lead  in  an  attempt 
to  reform  French  spelling,  which  indeed  at  that  time 
stood  in  no  small  need  of  being  reduced  to  order,  and 
he  also  was  one  of  a  small  body  of  writers  who  re- 
peated in  France  the  hopeless  attempt  to  force  the 
poetry  of  modern  languages  to  conform  to  classic 
metres.  His  Academy  has  already  been  mentioned. 
Jean  Daurat  and  Pontus  de  Thyard  are  chiefly  worth 
mention  because  their  names  are  associated  with  those 
of  more  original  men.  Daurat  was  a  humanist,  whose 
share  in  producing  the  poetry  of  the  Pleiade  was  to 
direct  the  reading  of  his  pupils  at  the  college  of 
Coqueret,  and  to  write  Greek  and  Latin  verse  in 
praise  of  them.  His  French  verse  is  insignificant. 
Pontus  de  Thyard  could  claim  to  be  a  forerunner 
of  the  Pleiade,  for  his  Erreurs  Amoureuses  appeared 


302      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

shortly  before  the  first  published  verse  of  Ronsard 
and  Du  Bellay.  But  he  soon  renounced  verse  for 
theology  and  mathematics.1 

Of  most  of  the  poets  who  followed  "the  con- 
quering banner"  of  their  Prince,  Eonsard,  as  of  the 
lesser  learned  poets  of  Spain,  no  detailed  mention  can 
be  made  here.  The  abundance  of  literary  talent  which 
has  seldom  been  wanting  in  France  accounts  suffici- 
ently for  the  "crop  of  poets"  which  sprang  up  "at 
the  summons  of  Du  Bellay,  and  under  the  hand  of 
Ronsard."  That  time  of  war,  oppression,  and  conspir- 
acy might  have  seemed  to  be  "  wholly  consecrated  to 
the  Muses."  Olivier  de  Magny  (d.  1560),  Jacques 
Tahureau  (1527-1555),  Nicolas  Denisot  (1515-1559), 
called  "le  Comte  d'Alsinois"  by  anagram,  Louis  le 
Caron  (1536  - 1617),  who  called  himself  Charondas, 
Estienne  de  la  Boetie  (1530-1563),  the  friend  of  Mon- 
taigne, who  indeed  saved  him  from  oblivion,  and 
others  whom  it  were  tedious  to  mention,  were  men  of 
talent,  respectable  members  of  the  army  of  minor 
poets,  which  in  nations  of  considerable  literary  faculty, 
and  in  times  of  literary  vigour,  has  never  been  want- 
ing. One  really  original  poet  usually  makes  many 
who  are  accomplished,  but  who  without  the  example 
might  never  have  written,  and  would  certainly  not 
have  written  so  well.  It  was  perhaps  the  necessity 
for  finding  a  rhyme  to  haut  which  induced  Boileau 
to  quote,  from  among  all  the  followers  of  Ronsard,  the 

1  A  Selection  of  Ba'if's  verse  has  been  made  by  M.  Becq  de  Fon- 
quieres,  1874,  and  his  Mimes  have  been  reprinted  by  M.   Blanche- 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   303 

names  of  "Desportes  and  Bertaut."  His  dogmatic 
assertion  that  they  were  made  "  more  restrained "  by 
the  fall  of  Eonsard  is  perfectly  unfounded.  Desportes 
(1546-1606),  who  in  character  was  a  courtier  of  the 
baser  kind,  owed  his  great  popularity  at  Court  to  the 
fact  that  he  was  an  echo  of  one  part  of  Eonsard.1  Ber- 
taut (1552-1611),  another  courtier,  was  also  another 
Desportes.  Their  greater  measure  was  mainly  due  to 
the  fact  that  they  represented  the  decadence  of  their 
school. 

There  are,  however,  three  poets  of  the  later  sixteenth 
century  in  France  who  stand  apart,  though  all  are 
fairly  describable  as  followers  of  Eonsard,  and  to  one 
of  them  it  was  given,  in  the  French  phrase,  to  "  tell  its 
fact "  to  the  meticulous  criticism  of  Malherbe.  They 
are  Du  Bartas,  Aubigne\  and  Eegnier. 

Guillaume  Salluste,  Seigneur  du  Bartas,  was  born  in 

or  about  1544,  at  Montfort,  near  Auch,  in  Gascony. 

He  served  Henry  IV.  both  in  diplomacv 

Du  Bartas.  *  .  r  j 

and  in  war,  and  died  in  1590  of  wounds 
received  at  the  battle  of  Ivry.  Du  Bartas  was  one  of 
the  many  of  his  time  who  in  a  once  favourite  phrase 
were  "  tarn  Marte  quam  Mercurio,"  equally  devoted  to 
arms  and  to  letters.  On  the  suggestion  of  Jeanne 
d'Albret,  the  Queen  of  Navarre,  he  began  by  writing  a 
poem  on  the  story  of  Judith;  but  his  fame  was  gained 
by  the  Semaine,  or  "  Week  of  Creation,"  published  in 
1579.  It  was  followed  by  the  Uranie,  the  Triomphe 
de  la  Foi,  and  the  Seconde  Semainc,  of  which  part  was 
published  in  1584,  and  which  remained  unfinished  at 

1  Ed.  M.  Alfred  Michiels.     1858. 


304      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

his  death.  Du  Bartas  is  an  interesting  figure,  and  his 
literary  fortune  has  been  curious.  With  men  of  his 
class  in  France  a  profession  of  Protestantism  was 
commonly  only  a  form  of  political  opposition.  They 
were  "  of  the  Beligion  "  because  they  were  the  enemies 
of  the  House  of  Guise,  and  the  great  majority  of  them 
fell  away  from  it  in  the  following  generations.  But 
with  Du  Bartas  the  religious  enthusiasm  was  mani- 
festly real.  He  was  of  the  Puritan  type,  and  in  that 
lies  part,  at  least,  of  the  explanation  of  his  strange 
literary  fortune  in  his  own  country.  He  was  at  first 
extraordinarily  popular.  Even  Eonsard  praised  him, 
and  sent  him  a  present  of  a  pen.  But  his  party 
began  to  claim  that  he  was  the  superior  of  the  courtier 
poet.  This  not  unnaturally  drew  from  Eonsard  the 
emphatic  denial  of  the  sonnet  to  Daurat,  and  the 
opinion  of  Frenchmen  has  been  favourable  to  the 
older  poet.  Du  Bartas  has  been  treated  with  neglect, 
and  even  contempt,  by  his  own  countrymen.1  Abroad 
he  has  had  better  fortune.  He  was  widely  trans- 
lated. The  English  version  of  Joshua  Sylvester 
was  long  popular  with  us,  and  in  comparatively 
recent  times  he  has  been  praised  by  Goethe  for 
showing  qualities  wanting  in  other  Frenchmen.  But 
Frenchmen,  to  whom  the  Puritan  type  has  always  been 
uncongenial,  have  disliked  him  on  those  very  grounds. 
They  have  always  insisted  on  looking  exclusively  at 
his  faults,  his  want  of  taste,  his  provincialism,  and  his 
pedantry.     All  are  undeniable,  but  the  critics  who 

1  There  is  still  no  modern  edition  of  Du  Bartas.     The  standard 
edition  is  that  of  1610-1611,  in  2  vols,  folio. 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   305 

have  endeavoured  to  secure  justice  for  the  Pl&ade 
ought  to  have  remembered  that  this  last  was  only  an 
exaggeration  of  the  teaching  of  Eonsard  and  Du 
Bellay.  They  had  recommended  adaptation  of  the 
language  of  classic  poetry,  Greek  and  Latin.  They 
had  used  inversions,  and  had  argued  that  French 
writers  were  entitled  to  form  compound  words  on  the 
Greek  model.  Du  Bellay,  for  example,  justifies  the 
construction  of  such  a  word  as  "  fervetu."  Du  Bartas 
certainly  took  a  very  wide  licence  in  this  respect.  He 
wrote  such  lines  as — 

"Le  feu  donne-clarte,  porte-chaud  jette-flamme  ;" 

and  careful  examiners  have  found  more  than  three 
hundred  examples  of  such  words  in  his  verse.  As 
the  French  have  not  chosen  to  make  use  of  a  freedom 
legitimate  enough  in  a  language  which  contains  such 
words  as  marche  -  pied  and  aigredoux,  Du  Bartas 
has  suffered  for  his  boldness.  It  is  easy  enough  to 
find  pedantry  and  bad  taste  in  him;  and  it  would 
be  easy,  by  confining  attention  to  the  "  Pindaric  "  side 
of  Eonsard,  to  show  that  he  was  a  stilted  and  pompous 
writer.  But  it  is  no  less  the  case  that  there  is  a 
vehement  grandeur  in  Du  Bartas  which  is  painfully 
rare  in  the  correct  poetry  of  France.  It  may  be 
fairly  said  that  if  the  quality  of  the  French  mind, 
which  Frenchmen  call  "  le  bon  sens  francais,"  achieved 
one  of  its  triumphs  when  it  wholly  rejected  Du  Bartas, 
it  also  condemned  its  literature  to  possess  no  Milton. 
When  it  is  your  exclusive  ambition  to  be  without 
fault,  to  be  merely  correct,  your  safest  course  is  to 

u 


306      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

abstain.  If  you  will  keep  from  the  "  wine  cup  "  and 
"the  red  gold,"  from  love,  adventure,  and  ambition, 
then  you  may  "  easy  live  and  quiet  die " ;  but  you 
will  hardly  do  anything  passionate.  Nothing  is  so 
"correct"  as  cold  water. 

Theodore   Agrippa    D'Aubigne,   the   contemporary, 
friend,  and  kindred  spirit  of  Du  Bartas,  was  a  gentle- 
man   of   an   ancient  family  in    Saintonge. 

vauUq™.  His  lonS  life  was  M1  of  agitation  and 
many-sided  activity.  Jean  D'Aubigne,  his 
father,  was  Chancellor  of  Navarre.  The  son  was  born 
in  1550,  and  received  a  careful  education,  by  which  he 
unquestionably  profited,  though  we  may  doubt  the 
exact  accuracy  of  his  own  assertion  that  he  could  read 
Greek,  Latin,  and  Hebrew  at  the  age  of  six.  Jean 
D'Aubigne  was  a  vehement  Calvinist.  It  is  one  of 
the  best-known  stories  of  the  time  that  he  made  his 
son,  then  a  mere  boy,  swear,  in  the  presence  of  the 
decapitated  heads  of  La  Eenaudie  and  the  other  chiefs 
of  the  conspiracy  of  Amboise,  to  revenge  their  deaths. 
D'Aubigne  kept  this  "oath  of  Hannibal"  to  the  end 
of  his  life.  When  only  nine  years  old  he  risked  the 
stake,  "  his  horror  of  the  Mass  having  overcome  his 
fear  of  the  fire."  He  took  part  in  the  defence  of 
Orleans  in  the  first  war  of  Eeligion,  and  from  thence 
escaped  to  Geneva,  where  he  studied  under  Theodore 
Beza.  At  a  later  time  he  served  under  Conde,  and 
then  attached  himself  to  Henry  of  Navarre.  It  was 
his  good  fortune  to  be  in  hiding  for  a  duel  when  the 
Massacre  of  Saint  Bartholomew  took  place.  He  re- 
mained with  Henry  at  the  French  Court.      During 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   307 

this  period  he  seems  to  have  so  far  departed  from 
the  rigidity  of  his  principles  as  to  bow  down  with 
his  master  "in  the  temple  of  Eimmon."  At  this 
time  he  certainly  met  Eonsard,  and  fell  under  his 
influence.  He  wrote  court  poetry,  composed  a  tragedy, 
and  belonged  to  the  Academy  of  Baif.  When  Henry 
of  Navarre  made  his  escape,  D'Aubigne"  accompanied 
him.  The  Bearnais  had  no  more  daring  or  faithful 
servant,  and  none  who  spoke  to  him  with  a  ruder 
frankness.  The  abjuration  of  Henry  IV.  was  a  bitter 
blow  to  D'Aubigne,  and  he  risked  his  master's  favour 
by  his  blunt  condemnation  of  that  politic  act.  Yet 
Henry  knew  the  essential  fidelity  of  D'Aubigne,  and 
left  him  the  possession  of  his  offices  of  Governor  of 
Saintonge  and  Vice-Admiral  of  Poitou.  After  the 
murder  of  the  king  he  took  part  in  the  unfortunate 
opposition  to  Marie  de  Medici.  The  publication  of 
his  Histoirc  Universcllc  aroused  enemies  against  him, 
and  in  1620  he  fled  to  Geneva,  where  he  died  in 
1630,  energetic  to  the  last — "lasse  de  vains  travaux, 
rassasie,  et  non  ennuye  de  vivre,"  as  he  describes 
himself  in  his  will.  The  prose  work  of  D'Aubigne"  is 
very  large,  and  will  be  dealt  with  elsewhere.1  His 
poetry  is  divided  into  the  lighter  verse  which  he  wrote 
under  the  influence  of  Eonsard,  and  Lcs  Tragiques, 
which  unquestionably  show  the  influence  of  Du 
Bartas.  If  his  own  words  are  to  be  taken  in  the 
literal  sense,  they  were  written  in  the  very  stress  of 

1  An  edition  of  the  works  of  D'Aubigne,  complete  with  the  excep- 
tion of  L'llistoire  Universcllc,  was  published  in  Paris,  1873-1892,  by 
MM.  Reaume  et  de  Caussade.     Partial  reprints  are  numerous. 


308      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

the  war  with  the  League ;  but  there  is  internal  evi- 
dence that  this  can  only  be  true  of  the  three  first. 
The  others  were  at  least  largely  written  after  the  peace 
of  Vervins  in  1598.  There  are  seven  poems  in  Les 
Tragiques,  called  Miseres,  Princes,  La  Chambre  Doree, 
Les  Feux,  Les  Fers,  Vengeances,  Jugement.  They 
are  historical  poems,  written  in  verse  which  is  some- 
times heavy,  but  often  magnificent,  and  always  ani- 
mated by  a  grim  force.  D'Aubigne  denounces  wicked- 
ness in  the  form  of  a  Latin  satirist;  but  the  spirit 
comes  from  the  Hebrew  prophet,  and  that  is  perhaps 
belittled  if  we  call  it  satire. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  sharper  contrast  than 
is  shown  between  the  long  restless  life  of  D'Aubigne 
and  the  career  of  Mathurin  Eegnier.  He  was  born  at 
Chartres  in  1573,  in  a  family  of  the  middle  class,  and 
was  nephew  to  the  prosperous  court  poet  Desportes. 
His  family  destined  him  to  the  Church,  and  he  was 
tonsured  at  the  age  of  eleven.  By  the  influence,  in  all 
probability,  of  his  uncle,  he  was  appointed  to  a  place 
in  the  suite  of  the  Cardinal  Joyeuse,  French  Ambas- 
sador in  Italy.  Later  on  he  was  provided  for  by  a 
canonry  in  his  native  town,  and  died  there  in  1613. 
The  character  of  Eegnier  may  unfortunately  be  de- 
scribed nearly  in  the  terms  which  the  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington used  of  an  English  military  adventurer  who 
had  served  under  him  in  the  Peninsula.  He  was,  said 
the  Duke,  "  a  brave  fellow,  but  a  sad  drunken  dog." 
A  considerable  poet,  but  a  sad  drunken  dog,  is,  it  is 
to  be  feared,  the  description  of  Eegnier.  His  habits 
rather  than  the  quality  of  his  verse  justify  the  epithet 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   309 

of  "  cynical "  which  has  been  applied  to  him.1  Al- 
though he  wrote  other  verse,  including  some  fine 
lyrics,  Eegnier  is  chiefly  memorable  as  a  satirist. 
This  he  was  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word.  He 
attacked  vices,  and  did  not  only  say  savage  things 
about  people  whom  he  disliked.  In  the  form  of  his 
verse  Eegnier  was  so  far  correct  that  he  escaped  the 
condemnation  which  the  school  of  Malherbe  passed  on 
all  the  other  poets  of  his  century.  Yet  he  kept  much 
of  the  freedom  of  the  earlier  time,  and  in  his  ninth 
satire  he  pointed  out  with  admirable  precision  exactly 
what  were  the  weaknesses  of  the  reform  of  Malherbe. 
There  is  an  individuality  and  an  air  of  sincerity  in 
Eegnier  which  saves  his  work  from  the  too  common 
fault  of  modern  satire — which  is  to  be  a  mere  echo  of 
Juvenal,  verse  written  not  because  the  author  feels 
any  indignation,  but  only  because  he  thought  it  a 
distinguished  action  to  imitate  the  classics  and  scold 
his  contemporaries. 

The  ambition  of  the  Pleiade  included  the  reform 
of  dramatic  as  well  as  of  other  literature.  Its  poets 
wished  to  replace  the  Mysteries,  Moralities,  "  Sotties," 
and  "  Farces  "  by  tragedy  and  comedy.  Their  chances 
of  success  in  this  field  might  have  seemed,  if  anything, 
more  promising  than  elsewhere.  The  taste  for  the 
theatre  was  very  strong  in  France.  In  Paris  there 
existed  a  guild,  established  by  charter  from  the  king 
in  1402,  for  the  performance  of  mysteries  and  moral- 
ities, which  possessed  a  theatre  at  the  Hospital  de 
la  Trinite,  near   the  gate  of  St  Denis.     Two   other 

1  Ed.  M,  Prosper  Poitevin. 


310      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

societies,  the  Clercs  de  la  Bazoche,  or  Clerks  of  the 
Parliament  of  Paris,  and  the  Enfants  sans  Souci,  a 
body  of  volunteers  who  performed  farces,  existed  by 
the  side  of,  and  to  some  extent  under  the  control  of, 
the  chief  guild,  which  was  called  the  Confrerie  de 
la  Passion.  In  the  provinces  there  were  numerous 
societies  named  pwys  which  existed  to  produce  plays. 
And  while  the  stage  enjoyed  so  much  popularity,  a 
number  of  causes  were  at  work  to  render  it  no  longer 
possible  to  continue  the  religious  plays  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  The  influence  of  the  Eenaissance  helped  to 
discredit  their  form,  while  the  spread  of  the  Eeforma- 
tion  began  to  make  their  old  downright  realistic  piety 
look  ridiculous.  As  early  as  1540  the  Parliament  of 
Paris  had  protested  against  the  performances  of  the 
Confrerie  de  la  Passion  as  leading  to  scandal.  In 
1548  it  was  strictly  forbidden  to  present  religious 
mysteries. 

As    the    poets    of    the    Pleiade    were    just    about 

organising   themselves  in   those   years,    and   were   to 

present  their  first  attempt  to  repeat   the 

The  dramatic        *  ,  -  .  . 

work  of  the  classic  models  in  French  in  1552,  it  would 
seem  on  the  face  of  it  that  they  had  a 
singularly  favourable  opportunity.  They  had  only 
to  step  into  the  place  left  vacant.  But  that  was  in 
reality  far  from  being  the  case.  Although  the  Con- 
frerie de  la  Passion  was  forbidden  to  play  sacred 
mysteries,  it  was  left  in  possession  of  its  exclusive 
privilege  to  open  a  theatre  in  Paris,  and  was  thus 
able  to  silence  all  rivals.  The  tradesmen  and  artisans 
who  formed  the  guild  were  little  likely  to  favour  their 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   311 

contemptuous  literary  rivals,  while  the  poets  were  as 
little  disposed  to  go  cap  in  hand  to  such  masters. 
Thus  the  men  of  letters  were  practically  shut  out 
from  the  real  stage,  and  were  driven  to  seek  a  chance 
of  getting  their  pieces  acted  at  Court  or  in  colleges. 
They  had  no  access  to  any  body  of  actors.  We  need 
not  attach  too  great  importance  to  this  exclusion  from 
the  real  theatre.  If  Jodelle  and  Gamier  had  pos- 
sessed dramatic  genius  of  a  high  order,  their  works 
would  bear  witness  for  them.  In  time,  too — the  date 
is  1588 — the  Confrerie  de  la  Passion  did  consent  to 
the  establishment  of  an  independent  theatre.  After 
the  restoration  of  peace  in  1593  there  was  always 
one  in  Paris.  Thenceforward  it  was  within  the  power 
of  any  Frenchman  who  possessed  the  necessary  facul- 
ties to  be  the  Lope  de  Vega  or  the  Shakespeare  of 
his  country.  If  none  appeared,  it  was  doubtless  be- 
cause no  such  Frenchman  was  born ;  and  perhaps 
in  the  long-run  the  non-appearance  of  the  right  man 
is  the  one  adequate  explanation  of  the  want  of  any 
form  of  literature  in  any  country.  Yet  it  may  be 
allowed  that  the  monopoly  of  the  Confrerie  did  have 
a  certain  effect  on  the  dramatic  work  of  the  Pl^iade 
by  confining  them  to  coteries  and  colleges,  and  so 
intensifying  whatever  tendency  there  was  in  them 
to  produce  mere  school  exercises  on  a  classic  model. 
It  must  also  be  kept  in  mind  that  the  sacred  mys- 
teries continued  to  be  acted  in  the  provinces.  A 
few  traces  of  them  are  to  be  found  to  this  day  in 
the  form  of  the  religious  marionette  plays  performed 
in   Brittany.      In   Paris    itself    the    Confrerie   de   la 


312      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

Passion  continued  to  give  profane  mysteries,  which 
appear  to  have  been  long  straggling  successions  of 
scenes  taken  from  history,  or  from  the  tales  of 
chivalry  through  Ariosto.  Its  stage  has  this  much 
vitality,  that  it  was  used  for  political  purposes  by 
the  League.  But  all  this  belongs  to  the  history  of 
the  stage  proper  or  to  curiosity,  not  to  literature. 

Whatever  causes  may  be  held  to  be  responsible,  the 
fact  remains  that  the  dramatic  is  the  weakest  part  of 
the  work  of  the  poets  of  the  Pleiade.  Here  they 
made  little  effort  to  assimilate  and  reproduce  in 
genuine  French  form.  They  repeated  the  shape 
slavishly.  In  tragedy  they  did  not  try  at  all  to  go 
beyond  the  model  given  them  by  Buchanan  in  the 
Latin  plays  written  for  his  pupils  at  Bordeaux,  which 
again  were  taken  from  Seneca.  In  comedy  there  was 
less  slavery,  and  less  break  with  the  mediaeval  litera- 
ture. But  the  poets  did  comparatively  little  in 
comedy ;  and  the  liveliest  comic  writer  of  the  later 
sixteenth  century  in  France,  Larivey,  who  was  of 
Italian  descent,  did  not  achieve  more  than  to  give 
bold  adaptations  of  Italian  originals. 

The   title    of   father   of    modern   French   dramatic 

literature,    tragic    and    comic,    belongs    to    Estienne 

Jodelle,    Seigneur    de   Lymodin.     He   was 

Jodelle.  °.  J 

born  at  Paris  in  1532.  Jodelle.  was  a 
copious  miscellaneous  writer ;  but  only  two  tragedies, 
one  comedy,  and  some  poetry  written  in  his  youth, 
survive.1      His    CUopatre    Captive,   and   the    comedy 

1  Ed.  Marty  Laveaux,  1868-1870  ;  and  Ancien  Theatre  Francois  in 
the  "  Bibliotheque  Elzevirienne,"  vol.  iv. 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   313 

Eugtne,  were  performed  before  King  Henry  II.  in 
1552  by  Jodelle  himself  and  his  friends.  The  king 
was  so  pleased  that  he  gave  the  dramatist  five  hundred 
crowns,  a  handsome  sum  of  money  at  the  time.  In  the 
pardonable  joy  of  their  hearts,  Jodelle  and  his  friends 
celebrated  their  success  by  a  supper  at  Arcueil,  which 
became  the  excuse  for  a  scandal.  Being  full  of  a 
classic  zeal,  not  always  according  to  knowledge,  the 
poets  impounded  a  goat,  crowned  it,  and  chanted  some 
nonsense  verses,  largely  composed  of  Greek  words,  the 
work  of  Baif.  The  New  Learning  had  always  been 
open  to  the  reproach  of  paganism,  and  the  Beformers 
accused  the  party  of  having  performed  a  heathen 
sacrifice.  The  Confrerie  de  la  Passion,  glad  of  an 
excuse  to  bring  rivals  into  trouble,  joined  in  the  cry. 
Jodelle's  second  tragedy,  Didon  se  sacrifiant,  was  written 
later,  and  apparently  never  played.  In  1558  he  fell 
into  disgrace  through  the  failure  of  a  mask  on  the 
Argonauts,  provided  for  the  reception  of  Henry  II.  at 
the  Hotel  de  Ville.  It  is  said  that  the  stage  carpenter 
mistook  the  word  rockers  for  dockers,  and  provided 
bell-towers  instead  of  rocks  in  the  properties.  Jodelle 
never  recovered  favour;  but  this  accident  is  not 
accountable  for  the  misfortunes  of  his  later  years. 
There  is  evidence  that  "  much  bad  living  kill'd  Teste 
Noire  at  last,"  for  Jodelle,  unlike  his  brother  poets,  who 
seem  to  have  been  orderly  people,  was  of  the  character 
of  our  own  Bohemian  forerunners  of  Shakespeare.  He 
died  worn  out,  and  in  great  distress,  in  1573. 

Jodelle  is  of  importance  rather  because  of  his  date, 
and  on  the  ground  that  he  indicated  the  road  which 


314      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

French  literary  drama  was  to  follow,  than  for  his 
Thesenecan  intrinsic  merits.  His  tragedies  are  little 
piays.  more  than  school  exercises.    His  model  was 

the  Latin  tragedy  of  Seneca,  which  in  itself  is  a  thin 
dry  copy  of  the  mere  machinery  of  the  Greeks.  The 
popularity  of  these  very  tiresome  pieces  during  the 
Eenaissance  can  be  partly  accounted  for  by  the  fact 
that  Greek  was  far  less  familiar  than  Latin.  But  it 
is  easy  to  make  too  much  of  this.  Sophocles  and 
Euripides  were  not  unknown.  Buchanan  caused 
Greek  plays  to  be  performed  by  his  pupils  at  Bor- 
deaux ;  while,  if  Jodelle  could  not  read  Greek  himself, 
he  might  have  had  the  help  of  Daurat,  and  he  had  the 
translations  of  Sophocles  by  Lazare  de  Baif  and  others 
to  guide  him  to  a  better  model  than  Seneca.  They 
would  have  been  quite  enough  for  a  writer  who  had 
any  dramatic  instinct.  But  Seneca  was  easy  to 
imitate.  A  well-known  story,  told  mostly  in  long 
speeches,  by  a  messenger  or  other  "  utility,"  no  play 
of  character,  and  a  chorus  which  chants  common- 
places, having  only  a  very  general  relation  to  the 
story — these  are  the  notes  of  the  Senecan  tragedy. 
It  is  obvious  that  they  are  easy  to  reproduce.  The 
opening  they  afforded  for  serious  moral  reflection 
must  have  had  an  attraction  for  the  poets  of  the 
Pl&ade,  who  had  a  very  definite  purpose — to  expel 
"frivolity"  from  poetry. 

A  tragedy  which  began  in  such  conditions  as  those 
described  here  could  hardly  hope  to  become  a  national 
drama.  It  is  certainly  the  fact  that  very  little  which 
was  written  before  the  seventeenth  century  has  much 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   315 

interest  except  as  a  curiosity.  Jodelle  and  his  imme- 
diate successors  can  hardly  be  said  even  to  have 
written  for  the  stage  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word. 
When  they  were  acted  at  all,  it  was  at  the  Court  or 
in  colleges.  They  had  so  far  an  influence  that  they 
succeeded  in  establishing  the  chorus  as  a  necessity. 
It  was  introduced  even  into  the  wild  anti-Eoyalist 
pieces  of  the  League;  but  these  writers  understood 
the  classic  model  so  little  that  they  treated  the  chorus 
as  a  mere  means  of  filling  in  the  intervals  between 
the  acts,  and  not  as  an  integral  part  of  the  play. 
They  in  fact  exaggerated  one  of  the  defects  of  Seneca, 
as  is  the  way  with  the  mere  imitator.  "We  have  to 
wait  for  the  generation  of  Eotrou  and  Corneille  before 
seeing  how  an  intelligent  attempt  could  be  made  to 
give  a  new  form  to  the  principles  of  the  classic  drama. 
As  for  the  earlier  poets,  as  they  chose  to  allow  them- 
selves to  be  bound  by  the  pedantic  rules  laid  down  by 
Joseph  Scaliger  in  his  Be  Tragecliis  et  Comediis  (1560), 
which  said  that  this  and  the  other  must  be  done  by 
every  right-minded  man  because  Seneca  had  done 
them,  their  plays  were  doomed  to  want  life. 

Of  Jodelle's  two  tragedies,  the  CUopdtrc  possesses, 
though  by  no  merit  of  his,  the  better  plot.  The  story 
of  the  death  of  the  Queen  of  Egypt  is  in  itself  so 
picturesque  and  so  complete  that  it  would  be  difficult 
to  spoil  it  altogether.  His  second  tragedy  is  rather 
better  written.  There  is  more  force  in  the  dialogue, 
more  poetry  in  the  moral  reflections  of  the  chorus  of 
Didon  ;  but  then  the  plot  is  inevitably  inferior.  It  is 
difficult  indeed  to  see  what  could  be  done  with  the 


31 G      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

story  of  Dido  and  iEneas  on  the  stage,  unless  the 
intention  is  to  make  the  hero  odious  or  ridiculous. 
It  is  true  that  Jodelle  does  not  fail  to  attain  to  a 
comic  effect,  which  is,  however,  too  obviously  unde- 
signed. The  last  words  he  puts  into  the  mouth  of 
iEneas  are — 

"  Pauvre  Didon,  helas  !  mettras-tu  l'assurance 
Sur  les  vaisseaux  marins,  que  n'ont  point  de  Constance." 

These  are  too  like  the  sailor's  traditional  excuse  to  be 
worthy  of  the  son  of  Anchises,  who  at  least  had  the 
grace  to  sail  "  multa  gemens,  magnoque  animum 
labef actus  amore."  It  is  but  just  to  add  that  not 
dissimilar  plunges  into  the  ridiculous  where  what 
was  called  for  was  the  sublime,  might  be  found  in 
the  great,  the  truly  great,  Corneille.  It  must  also  be 
remembered  that  Jodelle  established  the  Alexandrine 
as  the  metre  of  French  tragedy,  though  he  did  not 
submit  to  the  strict  rules  enforced  in  the  next 
century. 

The  names  of  Jacques  Grevin  and  Jean  de  la  Taille 
are  entitled  to  little  more  than  bare  mention  among 
Grevin  and  tne  followers  of  Jodelle.  Grevin  (1540?- 
La  Taiiie.  1570)  was  for  a  time  a  favourite  with 
Eonsard ;  but  he  was  a  strong  Calvinist,  and  broke 
with  the  Prince  of  Poets  in  resentment  against  the 
Discours  sur  les  Misdres  du  Temps.  Eonsard  retaliated 
by  cancelling  his  praise  of  Grevin.  One  tragedy, 
Ce'sar,  and  two  comedies,  La  Trtsoribre  and  Les 
Esbahis,  all  three  written  in  his  youth,  still  survive.1 

1  Ed.  1562,  but  Les  Esbahis  is  in  the  Ancien  Theatre  Francais. 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   317 

Jacques  de  la  Taille  (1540  ?-1608),  a  soldier,  and  in 
poetry  a  follower  of  Konsard,  lives  in  all  literary 
histories  by  a  piece  of  unjust  ill-luck.  He  wrote  the 
two  famous  lines  at  which  everybody  has  laughed — 

"  Ma  mere  et  mes  en  fans  aye  en  recommanda  .  .  . 
II  ne  put  achever  car  la  mort  l'engarda  (l'empecha)." 

M.  Suard,  who  habitually  took  a  contemptuous  tone 
to  the  early  dramatists  of  his  country,  made  the 
remark — a  very  fair  example  of  the  silly  would-be 
clever — that  La  Taille  found  it  easier  to  shorten  his 
words  than  to  lengthen  his  line.  Yet  such  a  stroke 
of  mistaken  realism  as  this  is  less  essentially  foolish 
than  the  flat  absurdity  which  Jodelle  puts  into  the 
mouth  of  iEneas.  The  attempt  to  be  true  to  life  was 
at  least  meritorious  in  intention,  and  there  is  force  in 
La  Taille's  tragedy  of  Les  Gabaonites,  on  the  story  of 
the  sons  of  Kizpah.1 

Eobert  Gamier  (1545-1601)  was  a  far  stronger  man 

than  any  of  these  three.     He  was  born  at  La  Ferte- 

Bernard,  was  a  magistrate  all  his  life,  and 

Gamier.  on  -i 

was  finally  made  Counsellor  of  State  by 
Henry  IV.  Gamier  was  much  less  open  to  the 
reproach  of  being  "  a  barren  rascal "  than  Jodelle, 
Grevin,  or  La  Taille.  His  list  of  plays  is  of  re- 
spectable length.  Porcie  was  written  in  1568, 
Corndic  (translated  into  English  by  Kyd)  in  1574, 
and  Marc  Antoine  in  1578.  Z'Hippolyte,  the  Troade, 
and  the  Antigone  are  translations  or  adaptations  of 
Sophocles  and  Euripides.     There  are  two  other  plays 

1  Ed.  M.  Rene  de  Maulde.     4  vols.,  1878-1882. 


318      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

more  original  than  either  of  these — Les  Juives  (1583), 
a  "  Sacred  Tragedy  "  founded  on  the  story  of  Zede- 
kiah;  and  Bradamante  (1582),  a  romantic  drama 
•founded  on  passages  in  Ariosto's  Orlando  Furioso.1 
These  two  plays  are  of  special  interest.  Les  Juives 
is  an  example  of  all  that  could  be  done  with 
Garnier's  model.  The  story  supplies  just  such  a 
catastrophe  as  was  fit  to  be  treated  in  the  meas- 
ured, and,  when  good,  stately  Senecan  fashion.  The 
prophet,  to  whom  Gamier  gives  no  name,  Zedekiah 
and  his  mother  Amutal  (Sedecie  and  Amital  in 
the  French),  the  King  of  Babylon  and  his  general 
Nabuzardan,  are  exactly  the  characters  required ; 
while  the  chorus  is  abundantly  provided  with  matter 
for  lamentations,  reflections  on  the  instability  of  all 
human  things,  the  justice  of  God,  and  the  cruelty 
of  the  wicked.  In  this  case  also  the  chorus  of 
Jewesses,  to  which  the  play  owes  its  name,  though 
less  truly  a  personage  in  the  drama  than  it  is  in 
the  (Edipus  the  King  or  the  Agamemnon,  is  not  a 
mere  voice  used  to  fill  up  the  intervals  between  the 
acts.  Gamier  was  very  free  from  the  want  of  taste 
which  allowed  Jodelle  to  drop  into  vulgarity.  He 
had  an  instinct  for  the  "grand  manner,"  and  does 
not  fall  below  his  subject.  The  Bradamante  is  a 
still  more  interesting  play  than  Les  Juives.  There 
is  something  almost  pathetic  about  it,  for  in  the 
Bradamante  Gamier  may  be  said  to  have  brought 
French  literary  drama  to  within  touch  of  emancipa- 

1  Eel.  of   1585   reprinted  in   Sammlung  Franzosischer  Neudrucke. 
Heilbronn,  by  Herr  Wendelin  Funster. 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   319 

tiou  from  the  tyranny  of  Seneca's  form.  If  he  had 
gone  a  step  further,  or  had  found  a  worthy  follower, 
the  work  of  Corneille  might  have  been  antedated  by 
half  a  century,  and  in  happier  circumstances.  The 
subject  is  neither  classical  nor  Biblical,  and  this 
perhaps  gave  Gamier  the  courage  to  drop  the  chorus. 
As  the  Bradamante  is  not,  in  the  full  sense  of  the 
word,  a  tragedy,  since  it  has  a  happy  ending,  the 
chorus  was  not  strictly  necessary ;  but  as  it  was 
not  meant  to  be  a  comic  piece,  the  natural  course 
at  the  time  would  have  been  to  supply  one.  As  has 
been  noted  above,  the  chorus  was  habitually  intro- 
duced into  pieces  which  were  meant  to  be  serious 
even  when  the  subject  was  not  classical.  At  the 
same  time  Gamier  showed,  by  introducing  a  "con- 
fidant," that  he  had  a  real  sense  of  the  theatre. 
He  knew  that  over  and  above  the  main  personages 
there  must  always  be  some  who  explain,  or  to  whom 
explanations  are  made,  and  to  whom  it  falls  to  render 
the  action  intelligible.  The  name  does  not  alter  the 
nature  of  the  thing.  Horatio  is  a  confidant,  and 
Mercutio  is  not  much  else,  though  we  do  not  call 
them  by  the  title.  That  they  are  also  interesting 
human  beings  is  an  argument  for  incorporating  the 
chorus  in  the  play,  not  a  proof  that  some  such  wheel 
in  the  machinery  is  superfluous.1     Then,  as   he  was 

1  It  is  advisable  not  to  burden  one's  page  with  illustrations,  but 
it  may  be  pointed  out  that  the  modern  "well-made  play"  supplies 
copious  examples  of  what  is  said  above.  The  Jalin  of  Alexandre 
Dumas  fils,  in  the  Demi  Monde,  or  the  Due  de  Montmeyran  in  Le 
Gendre  de  M.  Poirier  of  Emile  Angier,  are  chorus  ;  and  it  may  be 
added  that  they  are  also  legion. 


320      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

not  under  the  obligation  to  maintain  the  perpetual 
gravity  proper  to  classical  and  Biblical  subjects, 
Gamier  felt  free  to  relieve  the  heroic  passages  by 
comedy.  Aymon,  the  father  of  Bradamante,  is  a 
human,  peppery,  and  peremptory  old  gentleman,  very 
much  the  barba  of  the  Spanish  comedia,  and  a  true 
figure  of  comedy.  This,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  is 
quite  a  different  thing  from  the  introduction  of  scenes 
of  clowns  who  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  action. 
It  is  a  detail  worth  noting  that  Gamier,  who  does 
not  seem  to  have  cared  much  whether  his  play  was 
acted  or  not,  adds  a  note  to  his  preliminary  argument 
to  tell  any  manager  who  chooses  to  bring  it  out  that 
he  is  free  to  replace  the  absent  chorus  by  interludes 
between  the  acts,  "in  order  that  they  may  not  be 
confounded,  and  not  to  join  together  what  requires 
a  certain  interval  of  time."  This,  besides  proving 
how  fully  the  French  dramatists  of  the  day  accepted 
Scaliger's  most  disputable  theory,  that  the  chorus 
served  only  to  separate  the  acts,  is  an  example  of 
what  has  already  been  said  of  the  Spanish  and  the 
English  stages — namely,  that  an  audience  expected 
something  more  than  the  play,  which  the  Spaniards 
gave  in  saynetes  and  dances  between  the  acts,  and 
the  English  inserted  in  the  body  of  the  piece. 

Antoine  de  Montchrestien,  the  last  survivor  of  the 

French  dramatists  of  the  sixteenth  century,  may  by  a 

slight  stretch  of   charity  be  described  as 

the  Eacine  of  the  epoch  in  which  Gamier 

was  the  Corneille.     The  date  of  his  birth  is  unknown, 

but  he  was  killed  in  a  skirmish  during  a  Huguenot 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   321 

rising  in  1621,  after  a  very  agitated  life.  At  one  time 
he  was  an  exile  in  England  on  a  charge  of  homicide, 
and  owed  his  pardon  to  the  intercession  of  James  L, 
whose  favour  he  had  earned  by  a  play  on  the  death  of 
Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  called  I?  ficossaise.  It  is  sad  to 
relate  that  he  was  afterwards  accused  of  coining  false 
money.  In  1615  he  published  a  TraiU  de  V Economic 
Politique,  and  was  indeed  the  first  to  use  the  term. 
Montchrestien  wrote  a  poem  Suzanne,  and  a  Bergerie, 
or  Pastoral,  in  addition  to  his  six  tragedies — SopJw- 
nisbe,  or  La  Cartagenoisc  (translated  from  Trissino), 
Les  Lacdnes,  David,  Aman,  Hector,  and  L'lZcossaise. 
Montchrestien  was  an  accomplished  writer  of  the 
school  to  which  he  belonged,  but  his  plays  show  no 
great  originality.  They  were  published  in  1601,  and 
were  probably  all  written  in  his  youth.  It  does 
not  appear  that  they  were  ever  acted. 

The  comedy  of  this  school  was  less  a  pure  imitation 

of  classic  models,  but  it  was  also  on  the  whole  less 

interesting,    and    cannot   be   described   as 

The  comedy.  ,    .       _         , 

original,  since  it  took  freely  from  the 
Italians.  Every  one  of  the  nine  surviving  plays  of 
Pierre  Larivey  (1540  ?-1611  ?)  has  an  Italian  original. 
He  was  descended  from  the  family  of  the  Giunti, 
printers  at  Florence  and  Venice.1  His  father  had 
settled  at  Troyes,  and  had  translated  his  name  into 
L'Arrive,  which  was  again  corrupted  into  Larivey. 
Pierre  was  a  copious  translator  from  his  father's 
native    language.      The    nine    comedies    he    left   are 

1  Ancien  Theatre  Francais.     Bibliotheque  Elzevirienne.      Vols.  v. 
and  vi. 

X 


322      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

adaptations  as  well  as  translations.  He  subjected 
his  originals  to  the  revision  which  the  English  play- 
wright has  so  often  applied  to  French  plays,  but  it  was 
not  for  the  purpose  of  forcing  them  to  become  decent. 
Through  Larivey  much  of  the  common  matter  of 
comedy  was  handed  on  to  Moliere,  who  may  also  have 
owed  his  predecessor  something  on  the  side  of  the 
technical  skill.  It  is,  however,  mainly  on  this  ground 
that  they  belong  to  French  literature.  The  comedy 
of  the  later  sixteenth  century  is  on  the  whole  un- 
important. It  cannot  be  said  to  have  had  any  par- 
ticular character  of  its  own.  One  piece  has  indeed 
some  promise  and  considerable  merit  of  execution. 
This  is  the  Reconnue  of  Belleau.1 

The  story  has  the  merit  of  being  drawn  from  the 

real  life  of  the  time.     A  young  lady  named  Henriette 

has  been  placed  while  a  child  in  a  religious 

La  Reconnue.      ,  _.    .  .  ni         i  i  • 

house  at  Poitiers.  She  has  no  vocation, 
and  escapes  from  the  convent  to  become  a  Huguenot. 
In  the  storm  of  the  city  by  the  king's  army  she  is  made 
prize  by  a  certain  Captain  Eodomont,  whom  (a  pleas- 
ing touch  of  the  manners  of  the  age)  she  fully 
recognises  as  her  lawful  master.  The  captain  is  a 
very  honest  man,  who  is  well  disposed  to  marry  his 
captive.  But  he  is  summoned  away  to  take  part  in 
the  recovery  of  Havre  from  the  English,  and  leaves 
her,  having  always  "  treated  her  as  a  sister,"  in  charge 
of  an  old  lawyer  in  Paris.  At  this  point  the  play 
begins.  The  old  lawyer  falls  in  love  with  Henriette, 
and  thereby  arouses  the  jealousy  of  his  wife.      To 

1  A?icien  Thedtrc  Frangais,  vol.  iv. 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   323 

quiet  her  he  arranges  to  marry  Henriette  to  his  clerk, 
Jehan,  who  is  likely  to  prove  a  complacent  husband. 
He  tells  Henriette  that  the  captain  has  been  killed  at 
Havre.  In  the  meantime  we  learn  that  a  certain 
young  advocate  has  fallen  in  love  with  Henriette. 
She,  who  would  willingly  marry  either  the  captain  or 
the  advocate — for  she  is  a  downright  though  honest 
young  person — nevertheless  resigns  herself  to  marry 
Jehan,  seeing  that  the  captain  is  dead,  and  she  dare 
not  go  home.  At  this  crisis  the  captain  turns  up  en- 
riched by  booty,  and  immediately  afterwards  Henriette's 
father.  The  "  recognition  "  gives  its  name  to  the  play. 
Henriette  is  married  to  the  advocate.  The  captain  is 
consoled  with  the  promise  of  another  wife,  and  all 
ends  happily.  Here  are  the  elements  of  a  very  lively 
play,  and  one  can  imagine  what  Lope  de  Vega  or 
Dekker  would  have  made  of  them.  Belleau  falls 
much  short  of  what  was  possible,  largely  because  his 
respect  for  classic  models  made  him  feel  it  incumbent 
on  him  to  tell  his  story,  not  by  dialogue  and  action,  but 
by  narratives.  The  return  of  the  captain,  for  instance, 
which  might  have  made  an  excellent  scene,  is  only 
described  by  the  old  lawyer's  servant.  The  merits 
of  the  comedy  are  none  the  less  considerable.  They 
lie  in  the  brisk  flowing  verse  of  the  dialogue,  which, 
as  was  to  be  expected  of  "le  gentil  Belleau,"  is  wholly 
free  from  mere  grossness,  and  in  the  human  truth  of 
the  characters.  Even  the  author's  excessive  deference 
to  the  classics  is  partly  atoned  for.  His  descriptions  of 
what  it  would  have  been  better  to  tell  by  action  are 
mostly  given  by  Jeanne,  the  lawyer's  servant,  who  is  an 


324      EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

excellent  study  of  that  very  French  personage,  the 
Bonne  &  tout  /aire,  the  general  servant,  who  is  partly 
the  drudge,  but  also  partly  the  friend,  and  a  little  the 
tyrant,  of  the  family.  Jeanne  is  truly  the  ancestress  of 
the  servante  of  Moliere.  With  La  Beconnue,  as  with 
Garnier's  Bradamante,  we  feel  that  only  a  little  was 
wanted  to  make  a  complete  success.  But  that  little 
was  not  supplied,  and  the  difference  between  the 
complete  and  the  incomplete  is  in  itself  infinite.  Of 
the  dramatic  work  of  the  French  poets  of 
ulTof  tie  early  tne  later  sixteenth  century  it  has  to  be  said 
dramatic  utera-  that  on  the  whole  it  was  lost  labour.      The 

hire. 

tragedy  is  too  artificial,  too  slavishly  imi- 
tated from  a  poor  model.  The  comedy,  as  all  can  see 
who  will  look  at  the  EugHe,  of  Jodelle,  or  the  Esbahis 
of  Grevin,  was  incoherent,  being  partly  a  rehandling 
of  the  "  sotties  "  and  the  "  farces  "  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
partly  an  imitation  of  Plautus  and  Terence,  nowhere 
an  original  growth.  Its  authors  were  men  of  letters, 
doing  exercises  in  kinds  of  literature  to  which  they 
were  attracted  by  their  prestige.  They  did  not  really 
work  for  the  stage.  Now  the  theatre,  in  the  material 
sense,  is  as  necessary  to  the  dramatist  as  the  model  is 
to  the  painter.  The  most  "learned"  of  artists  will 
soon  find  that  his  work  loses  life  and  reality  unless  he 
keeps  the  living  figure  constantly  before  his  eyes.  A 
play  is  meant  to  be  talked  and  acted  to  an  audience. 
When  it  is  written  only  to  be  read,  it  soon  loses  life. 
From  "  the  cart  of  Thespis  "  down  to  the  "  four  boards  " 
of  Lope  de  Eueda  in  the  Spanish  market-place,  there 
has  always  been  the  stage  first,  and  then  the  dramatic 


FRANCE:  POETRY  OF  THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE.   325 

literature.  That  is  equally  true  in  France.  The 
history  of  the  French  stage  is  continuous  from  the 
Confrerie  de  la  Passion,  through  the  Enfants  sans 
Souci,  and  the  professional  actors  who  succeeded 
them  at  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne,  down  to  the 
"  maison  de  Moliere."  But  in  the  sixteenth  century 
it  skirted  literature,  and  the  alliance  was  not  made 
between  them  till  the  time  of  Eotrou  and  Corneille. 
So  the  earlier  dramatic  literature  remains  a  curiosity, 
or  at  the  most  an  indication  of  what  was  to  come. 
Its  best  tragedy  is  an  "  essai  pale  et  noble,"  and  its 
comedy  a  rough  experiment,  too  often  the  very  reverse 
of  noble.  In  order  to  show  how  the  writers  of  the 
great  time,  and  of  the  eighteenth  century  classic 
school,  while  working  on  the  same  fund  of  prin- 
ciples, and  with  similar  aims,  differed  from  their  pre- 
decessors, it  would  be  necessary  to  go  beyond  the 
scope  of  this  book. 


326 


CHAPTEE    XL 

FRENCH   PROSE-WRITERS   OP   THE   LATER    SIXTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

ABUNDANCE  OP  LATER  SIXTEENTH-CENTURY  PROSE — A  DISTINCTION — SULLY 

— BODIN  —  THE    GREAT    MEMOIR -WRITERS  —  CARLOIX  —  LA    NOUK — 

D'AUBIGNE  —  MONLUC — BRANTOME —  THE    '  SATYRE    M^NIP^E  ' — ITS 

^      ORIGIN — ITS    AUTHORS  —  ITS    FORM    AND    SPIRIT — MONTAIGNE  —  HIS 

/        'ESSAYS' — THE    SCEPTICISM    OF    MONTAIGNE — HIS    STYLE— CHARRON 

AND   DU   VAIR. 

No  race  has  ever  allowed  less  of  what  it  has  done, 

suffered,  or  even  only  seen,  to  be  lost  than  the  French. 

It  has  ever  been  the  ambition  of  the  men 

Abundance  of 

later  sixteenth-  of    that   people    to   leave   some   record   of 
century  prose.  themselves>     ^  have  to  thank  what  an 

ill-conditioned  critic  might  call  its  vanity  for  a 
memoir  -  literature  which  would  be  inadequately 
praised  if  it  were  only  called  the  first  in  the  world. 
The  world  has  not  only  no  equal,  but  no  second,  to 
be  used  as  a  comparison.  The  France  of  the  wars  of 
Religion,  agitated  as  it  was,  was  exceptionally  rich  in 
these  delightful  books.  For  that  we  have  good  reason 
to  be  grateful,  since  this  time,  full  as  it  was  of  colour, 


FRENCH   PROSE- WRITERS.  327 

of  ability,  of  passion,  and  of  the  most  remote  extremes 
in  character,  has  left  us  the  means  of  knowing  it  more 
fully  than  we  can  know  our  own  generation.  As  it 
was  also  an  age  of  great  political  and  religious  strife, 
treatises  on  politics  and  religion  were  naturally  written, 
seeing  that  amid  all  the  turmoil  and  fury  men  con- 
tinued to  write.  There  is  more  cause  for  surprise 
when  we  meet  also  with  works  of  science,  or  on  the 
arts — though  the  surprise  is  not  perhaps  fully  justified, 
since  even  in  the  wildest  times  the  great  mass  of  men 
live  their  lives  very  much  as  in  peace.  When  com- 
motions have  reached  the  point  of  causing  universal 
disturbance,  they  soon  end.  Mankind  would  starve 
if  they  were  not  suspended. 

Out  of   all  the  mass  of  writing   produced  in  the 

second  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  in  France  (or  by 

men  who  must  be  assigned  to  that  period 

but  who  lived  into  the  seventeenth),  which  is 

valuable  for  one  reason  or  another,  all  is  not  literature. 

Only  a  part  can  be  read  from  any  other  motive  than 

interest  in  the  matter.     The  historians  Palma  Cayet, 

Jean  de  Serres,  and   his  brother  Olivier  de  Serres, 

author  of  the  TMdtre  oV  Agriculture,  for  instance,  will 

hardly  be  read  for  their  style,  or  except  by  students. 

As  much  must  be  said  of  the  memoirs  of 

Sully,    which    are    called    for    short    Les 

(Economies  Boyales.1      It   is    not   because    this   book 

1  The  true  title,  which  is  too  characteristic  not  to  be  given  in  full, 
is,  "  Des  Sages  et  Roy  ales  (Economies  domestiques,  politiques,  et 
militaires  de  Henri  le  Grand,  le  prince  des  vertus,  des  armes,  et  des 
lois,  et  le  pere  en  effet  [i.e.,  en  realite]  de  ses  peuples  francois.     Et 


328      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

began  to  be  published  at  the  Chateau  de  Sully  in 
1638  that  we  must  leave  it  aside,  for  in  matter  and 
spirit  it  belongs  to  the  previous  century.  Nor  is  it 
because  Les  (Economies  Royales  are  wanting  in  interest. 
They  are  of  great  historical  value,  and  the  form  is 
attractive  from  its  mere  oddity.  Sully  employed  four 
secretaries  to  tell  him  his  own  life,  so  that  they  are 
found  informing  their  master,  "  Monsieur  your  father 
had  four  sons,  for  whom  he  had  no  other  ambition 
than  to  make  them  such  gallant  men  that  they  might 
raise  their  house  to  its  ancient  splendour,  from  which 
the  fall  of  the  elder  line  to  the  distaff  [i.e.,  to  female 
heirs]  three  times,  and  the  unthrifty  courses  of  his 
ancestors,  and  especially  of  his  father,  had  much 
diminished  it  in  goods."  Or  a  little  further  on,  "  This 
[viz.,  to  be  a  faithful  and  obedient  servant]  you  also 
swore  to  him  in  such  fair  terms,  with  so  much  con- 
fidence, and  in  so  agreeable  a  tone  of  voice,  that  he  at 
once  conceived  great  hopes  of  you."  Yet  the  oddity 
and  the  matter  are  the  virtues  of  the  (Economies 
Royales.  Something  equivalent  must  needs  be  said 
of  the  memoirs  of  Castelnau,  of  Graspard  de  Saulx- 

des  servitudes  utiles,  obeissantes,  convenables,  et  administrations 
loyales  de  Maximilien  de  Bdthune,  l'un  des  plus  confidents  familiers 
et  utiles  soldats  et  serviteurs  du  grand  Mars  des  Francois.  Dedies 
a  la  France,  a  tous  les  bons  soldats  et  tous  peuples  Francois."  It  is 
described  as  printed  at  Amestelredam  (Amsterdam),  at  the  sign  of 
the  three  immortal  virtues  crowned  with  amaranth — i.e.,  Faith, 
Hope,  Charity  (of  which  last  Sully  had  no  great  share),  by  Alethinos- 
graphe  of  Clearetimdlee,  and  Graphexechon  of  Pistariste — i.e.,  Vera- 
cious-Writer of  Glory  -  Virtue  -  Care,  and  Emeritus  Secretary  of 
High  Probity.  The  (Economies  Royales  are  included  by  M.  Petitot 
in  his  collection  of  memoirs,  2nd  series,   vols,   i.-ix. 


FRENCH   PROSE- WRITERS.  329 

Tavannes — written  by  his  son  Jean — of  Conde,  of 
Francois  de  Guise,  and  many  others.1 

Jean  Bodin  (1530-1596)  is  a  great  name  in  political 
science.  His  Rdpiiblique,  first  published  in  French  in 
1578  and  then  enlarged  and  translated  into 
Latin  by  the  author  in  1586,  must  always 
remain  of  value,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  because 
it  shows  how  it  was  possible  for  men  of  the  sixteenth 
century  who  were  not  merely  servile  courtiers,  to 
believe  in  the  "right  divine"  of  kings  and  the  ex- 
cellence of  despotism.  Bodin's  influence,  even  among 
ourselves,  was  strong  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
Strafford  was  almost  certainly  thinking  of  him  when 
he  told  the  Council  that  the  king  was  entitled,  as 
representative  of  the  State,  to  act  legibus  solutus  ;  and 
his  doctrine  was  taught  in  incomparable  English  by 
Hobbes.  Yet  Bodin  will  hardly  be  read  for  his 
French,  and  what  we  cannot  read  for  the  form  can- 
not be  called  literature. 

It  shows,  as  fully  as  anything  well  could,  the  wealth 

of   French  prose  that  we  can   leave  aside  so  many 

writers,  even  in  what  is  not  one  of   the 

The  great 

memoir-       great  periods,  and  yet  retain  a  considerable 

body  of  literature  in  the  very  fullest  sense 

of  the  word.     Montaigne,  who  is  pre-eminent,  stands 

1  These  memoirs  are  included  in  the  great  collections  of  Petitot, 
and  Michaud  and  Poujoulat.  M.  Zeller,  in  two  volumes  of  his 
excellent  Histoire  de  France  racontee  par  les  contemporains,  has  made 
up  a  consecutive  story  by  extracts  from  the  writers  named  above  and 
others.  No  other  literature  could  supply  so  much  good  reading  of 
the  same  kind,  and  they  are  to  be  obtained  for  the  "ridiculous  sum  " 
of  tenpence  each. 


330      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

by  himself,  alike  in  form  and  in  matter,  and  so  for 
other  reasons  does  the  Satyre  MSnippte.  But  among 
the  memoir  -  writers  who  also  were  in  some  cases 
historians,  there  are  five  who  would  of  themselves 
be  enough  to  make  the  wealth  of  any  other  literature 
in  this  kind — Carloix,  La  Noue,  D'Aubigne',  Monluc, 
and  Brantome.  They  came  indeed  in  a  happy  hour. 
The  generation  was  full  of  strong  and  violent  char- 
acters, and  of  sudden  picturesque  events  to  supply 
them  with  matter.  The  language  had  been  developed 
and  shaped  by  Babelais,  Calvin,  and  the  translators 
with  Amyot  at  their  head,  while  it  had  not  yet  been 
pruned  by  the  pedantry  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
It  still  kept  its  colour.  In  history  the  classics  and 
the  Italians  had  supplied  models  of  more  capability 
than  the  chronicles  which  Comines  had  followed.  For 
the  model  of  the  memoir,  a  people  who  could  look 
back  to  Joinville  and  Villehardouin  had  no  need  of 
foreign   influence. 

The  five  writers  just  named  are  not  only  excellent 
in  themselves,  but  each  of  them  is  either  in  his  own 
person  the  representative  of  a  class,  or 
makes  us  acquainted  with  one.  Vincent 
Carloix  wrote,  not  his  own  life,  but  that  of  his  master, 
Francois  de  Scepeaux,  Marshal  de  Vieilleville  (1509- 
1571).1  Carloix  was  the  Marshal's  secretary  for  thirty- 
five  years,  and  was  fully  trusted  by  him.  It  was  by 
Vieilleville's  direction  that  the  secretary  undertook 
the  memoirs,  for  which  he  was  supplied  with  ample 
materials.     He  gives,  as  to  the  matter,  the  picture  of 

1  Petitot,  vols,  xxvi.-xxviii. 


FRENCH   PROSE-WRITERS.  331 

a  very  important  member  of  the  party  called  "  Les 
Politiques" — that  is,  those  Frenchmen  who,  with  no 
wish  to  separate  from  the  Church  of  Eome,  had  yet 
no  fanatical  enmity  to  the  Huguenots  on  religious 
grounds,  but  who  were  the  enemies  of  the  Dukes  of 
Guise  of  the  house  of  Lorraine.  "  Les  Politiques  "  con- 
quered in  the  end  by  alliance  with  Henry  IV.,  and 
from  them,  years  after  the  death  of  Vieilleville,  came 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  political  satires,  the 
Satyre  Me'nippe'e.  The  style  of  Carloix  is  one  of  singular 
life  and  colour,  "  although,"  as  the  editor  of  the  edition 
of  1757  says,  "it  is  full  of  Gaulish,  and  antiquated, 
phrases  and  expressions."  It  would  now  appear  more 
proper  to  put  "because."  Carloix  has  been  said  to 
have  taken  "  Le  Loyal  Serviteur,"  who  wrote  the  life 
of  Bayard,  as  his  model.  But  if  so,  he  followed  him 
only  in  his  plain  narrative.  Carloix  has  a  wit  and 
a  share  of  the  quality  called  by  the  French  malice, 
wanting  to  Bayard's  simple-hearted  squire.  Under 
his  air  of  candour  he  is  a  shrewd  experienced  man 
of  the  world. 

Francois  de  la  Noue,  called  Iron  Arm,  was  born  in 

Brittany  of  a  well-connected  family  in  1531,  and  was 

killed  at  the  siege  of  Lamballe  in  1591. 

La  Ao«f. 

His  character  was  drawn  in  the  concise 
words  of  Henry  IV. :  "  He  was  a  thorough  good  soldier, 
and,  still  more,  a  thorough  good  man."  "  C'etait  un 
grand  homme  cle  guerre,  encore  plus  un  grand  homme 
de  bien."  "What  are  called  his  memoirs  form  the 
twenty-sixth  book  of  his  Discours  Politiques  et  Mili- 
taries,  a    great   work    of   description,   criticism,   and 


332      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

reflection,  rather  than  history,  composed  while  he  was 
a  prisoner  in  the  hands  of  the  Spaniards  in  the  Low 
Countries.1  La  Noue,  who  was  converted  to  "  the  reli- 
gion "  by  the  chaplain  of  Coligny,  was  a  type  of  all  that 
was  best  among  the  Huguenots.  He  did  not  embrace 
the  fanaticism  together  with  the  principles  of  his 
party.  The  memoirs,  which  are  in  fact  an  account  of 
the  wars  of  Eeligion,  from  the  first  "taking  up  of 
arms"  in  1562  till  1570,  are  remarkably  impartial. 
La  Noue  was  one  of  the  small  body  of  men  who  can  be 
perfectly  loyal  to  their  own  party,  and  yet  never  fal- 
sify the  story  in  its  favour.  He  is  just  to  the  chiefs 
on  the  other  side.  Though  a  profoundly  moral  man, 
he  was  saved  from  priggery  by  a  very  real  sense  of 
humour.  He  could  see  the  laughable  side  of  things. 
His  style  wants  the  inimitable  flash  of  Monluc,  and  it 
has  not  got  the  very  peculiar  flavour  of  the  prose 
of  D'Aubigne,  but  it  is  nervous,  clear,  exact,  and 
thoroughly  excellent  in  its  own  way — the  way  of  a 
wise  temperate  man,  a  quiet  gentleman,  and  modest 
valiant  soldier. 

The  title  of  memoir-writer  must  be  understood  in  a 

very  wide  sense  when  it  is  applied   to   D'Aubigne. 

Strictly  speaking,  the  short  Vie  a  ses  En- 

D'Aubigne.  .  .  .  . 

fants  is  his  memoir/  The  Histoire  TJm- 
verselle,  his  main  work  in  prose,  is  a  great  general 
history  of  contemporary  events  at  home  and  abroad. 
But  then  it  is  also  a  history  of  events  in  which 
D'Aubigne  himself  played  an  active  part,  and  which 

1  The  memoirs  are  printed  in  the  thirty-fourth  volume  of  Petitot. 

2  Ed.  of  M.  L.  Lalanne,  1854. 


FRENCH   PROSE-WRITERS.  333 

he  tells  from  an  intensely  personal  point  of  view.  It 
is  to  be  noted  that  it  ends  with  the  wars  of  Beligion, 
and  the  peace  which  was  brought  about  by  the  abjura- 
tion of  the  king — that  is  to  say,  when  D'Aubigne 
himself  ceased  to  take  a  prominent  share  in  public 
affairs.  To  judge  by  his  other  prose  work,  which  is 
considerable,1  D'Aubigne  was  by  nature  a  vehement 
—  or  even  virulent  —  pamphleteer.  His  Baron  de 
Foeneste  and  his  Confession  de  Sancy  are  fiercely 
satirical.  They  are  also  rather  obscure,  and  not 
easily  readable.  It  was  on  the  suggestion  of  Henry 
IV.  that  he  first  began  to  think  of  writing  the  history 
of  his  time.  He  was  to  have  worked  in  co-operation 
with  the  President  Jeannin,  an  ex  -  Leaguer,  and 
another  thorough-going  partisan.  It  is  difficult  to 
imagine  what  they  could  have  produced  between 
them.  This  fantastic  scheme  was  dropped,  and  the 
Histoirc  Universelle  was  written  after  the  king's  death. 
The  style  of  D'Aubigne  shows  the  influence  of  his 
learned  education,  and  of  his  practice  in  the  poetic 
school  of  Eonsard.  He  sometimes  uses  purely  pe- 
dantic words,  as  when  he  says  that  his  father  put 
him  under  the  charge  of  a  tutor,  "Jean  Costin, 
homme  astorge  et  impiteux."  Astorge  is  a  Greek 
word  (ao-To/0709),  which  would  never  have  been  used 
by  Carloix,  La  Noue,  or  Monluc.  Again,  he  deliber- 
ately followed  classic  models  in  the  long  speeches, 
frequently  delivered  by  himself,  which  abound  in 
his   History,   and    are    the    most    carefully   written 

1  Much  remained  imprinted  till  it  was  published  by  MM.  Reaunie 
and  Caussade. 


334      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

parts.  When  he  tells  Henry  IV.  in  one  of  these 
addresses  that  it  is  useless  for  him  to  endeavour  to 
make  peace  with  the  Court,  because  "  you  are  guilty 
of  your  birth,  and  of  the  wrongs  which  have  been  done 
you,"  the  echo  of  Sallust  and  of  Tacitus  is  distinctly 
audible ;  yet  he  can  also  be  colloquial,  and  has  no 
scruple  in  using  idiomatic  and  proverbial  phrases 
which  a  later  generation  would  have  rejected  as  un- 
worthy of  the  "  dignity  of  history."  Dignity  is  not 
wanting  to  D'Aubigne,  but  it  is  given  by  the  force  of 
his  thoughts  and  of  his  character,  which  is  that  of  a 
man  who  might  be  a  tyrannical  friend  and  an  exacting 
servant,  but  who  was  brave  and  high-minded. 

For  a  perfect  picture  of  a  partisan  on  the  other  side 
we  have  only  to  go  to  the  Commentaries  of  one  whom 
D'Aubigne  describes  as  "ce  vieux  renard 
de  Monluc."  Yet  Blaise  de  Lasseran-Mas- 
sencome,  Seigneur  de  Monluc,  is  perhaps  hardly  to 
be  called  a  party  man.  Like  the  Lord  Byron  of  our 
own  civil  war,  he  "was  passionately  the  king's."  He 
was  born  in  or  about  1503,  near  Condom,  of  an  ancient 
and  impoverished  family  of  Gascony.  Though  the 
eldest  son,  he  had  even  less  than  the  traditional 
cadet's  portion.  He  could  boast  that,  though  a  gentle- 
man born,  he  had  fought  his  way  up  from  the  lowest 
rank.  After  serving  in  the  wars  of  Italy,  he  was 
named  Governor  of  Guyenne  by  the  king,  and  there 
distinguished  himself  by  a  ferocity  exceptional  even 
in  those  times.  An  arquebuse-wound  in  the  face  at 
the  siege  of  Eabastens  in  1570  disabled  him  for  active 
service.     His  Commentaries  were  dictated  in  his  last 


FRENCH  PROSE- WRITERS.  335 

years,  and  he  died  in  1577.1  It  is  one  of  the  many 
sayings  attributed  to  Henry  IV.  that  the  Commentaries 
of  Monluc  are  "the  Soldier's  Bible."  Whether  the 
king  said  it  or  not,  no  truer  description  of  this  delight- 
ful book  could  be  given.  Monluc  was  a  man  of  his 
time  and  his  race.  He  "  had  the  honour  to  be  a  Gas- 
con "  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  having  all  the  valour, 
enterprise,  craft,  humour,  and  expansive  vanity  of  the 
type.  But  he  was  also  a  perfect  soldier,  and  pro- 
foundly convinced  that  his  business  was  the  greatest 
a  man  could  follow.  His  Commentaries  were  avowedly 
written  to  show  the  "  captains  and  lieutenants  of 
France "  what  a  soldier  ought  to  be,  by  the  example 
of  Blaise  de  Monluc.  The  very  thoroughness  of  his 
vanity  gives  the  book  a  sincere  tone.  We  feel  that 
he  was  far  too  well  pleased  with  himself  to  think  it 
necessary  to  lie.  That  he  saw  things  through  the 
colouring  medium  of  his  self-sufficiency  is  possible — 
even  certain — but  at  least  he  gives  them  as  he  saw 
them.  Monluc  was  also  a  very  able  man,  who  was 
not  wanting  in  appreciation  of  the  humorous  side  of 
his  own  gasconnades,  and  therefore  his  vanity  is  never 
silly.  The  style  is  that  of  a  book  dictated  by  a  man 
with  a  boundless  faconde — that  is  to  say,  command  of 
ready  language ;  but  it  is  too  vivid  and  has  too  much 
substance  ever  to  be  garrulous.  At  times  he  can 
strike  out  images  of  great  force. 

1  The  Commentaries  of  Monluc  are  included  in  Petitot's  Collection, 
vols,  xx.-xxii.,  but  the  definitive  edition  is  that  of  M.  Alphonse  de 
Ruble,  published  by  the  Societe*  de  l'Histoire  de  France.  The  first 
three  volumes  contain  the  Commentaries;  the  fourth  and  fifth  the 
Letters,  which  M.  de  Ruble  discovered  in  Russia. 


336      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

Different  though  they  were  in  life  and  character, 

there  is  a  certain  resemblance  between  Monluc  and 

Brantome.     Both  have  the  same  air  of  per- 

Brantome.  .„.  . 

feet  satisfaction  with  themselves,  and  both 
pour  out  the  fruits  of  their  varied  experience  with  the 
same  appearance  of  colloquial  confidence.1  Pierre  de 
Bourdeilles,  called  Brantome  from  the  name  of  an 
abbey  of  which  he  was  lay  abbot — that  is  to  say,  of 
which  he  drew  the  abbot's  portion  by  favour  of  the 
king,  without  taking  the  vows — was  a  younger  son 
of  a  distinguished  family  of  Perigord.  He  was  born 
about  1540,  and  died  in  1614.  During  many  years  he 
travelled  much,  fought  more  or  less,  and  lived  at  Court 
in  the  intervals  of  journeys  or  campaigns.  Being 
disappointed  of  a  place  which  the  king  had  promised 
him,  he  was  preparing  to  revenge  himself  by  treason, 
when  his  horse  fell  with  him,  and  crippled  him  for 
life.  Brantome  now  betook  himself  to  writing  his 
reminiscences  as  a  consolation.  Though  he  professed 
a  certain  contempt  for  letters,  he  spent  great  pains  on 
his  work,  and  its  bulk  is  considerable.  In  addition  to 
some  minor  treatises — the  so-called  Discours  des  Duels, 
the  Rodomontades  Espaignolles,  and  a  few  others — he 
made  two  great  collections,  which  he  named  Des 
Hommes  and  Des  Femmes.  These  he  rewrote  and 
revised  not  a  little.  It  was  his  wish  that  they  should 
be  published  as  he  left  them,  but  his  heirs  neglected 
his  directions.     His  manuscripts  were  copied,  handed 

1  The  best  edition  of  Brantome  is  that  of  the  Socio"  te  de  l'Histoire 
de  France.  Prosper  Merimee  edited  an  incomplete  edition  in  the 
"  Bibliothecpue  Elzcvirienne. "     Partial  reprints  are  numerous. 


FRENCH  PROSE- WRITERS.  337 

about,  and  finally  straggled  into  print  by  fragments, 
to  which  the  booksellers  gave  fancy  names,  such  as 
Les  Grandes  Dames,  Les  Dames  Galantes,  and  so  forth. 
The  admiration  which  Monluc  felt  for  his  own  busi- 
ness of  soldiering,  Brantome  extended  to  every  mani- 
festation of  energetic  character  by  deed  or  word,  moral 
or  immoral,  with  a  marked,  but  mainly  artistic,  prefer- 
ence for  good  sayings  and  immorality.  He  is  not  to  be 
trusted  in  details,  but  he  is  in  himself  an  invaluable  wit- 
ness to  the  time  which  produced  him.  Nowhere  else 
can  we  see  so  fully  the  combination  of  the  French  love 
of  showy  action,  and  indifference  to  what  we  call 
morality,  with  the  cruel  wickedness  of  Italy,  which 
distinguished  the  Court  of  the  later  Valois.  He  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  in  himself  a  bad  man,  and  yet 
it  does  not  appear  that  he  saw  any  difference  between 
right  and  wrong.  Murders,  and  breaches  of  the  seventh 
commandment,  committed  by  ladies  and  gentlemen 
in  a  spirited  way,  have  his  admiration  quite  as  easily 
as  the  most  honourable  actions.  He  tells  all  in  the 
same  brightly  coloured,  rapid,  gossipping  style,  and 
stops  to  rejoice  over  every  striking  story  which  runs 
from  his  pen,  whether  it  be  a  trait  of  magnanimity  on 
the  part  of  the  Duke  of  Guise,  or  the  brutal  murder  of 
three  unarmed  traders  by  one  of  his  own  friends,  who 
was  angry,  and  relieved  his  feelings  by  a  butchery. 

The  attempt  to  enumerate  all  the  writers  who  may 
be  classed  with  one  or  another  of  the  five  just  named 
could  lead  to  nothing  but  a  catalogue  of  mere  names. 
Marguerite  de  Valois  (1553-1615),  the  wife  whom 
Henry  IV.  married  at  the  "red  wedding"  of  Saint 

Y 


338      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

Bartholomew,  and  afterwards  repudiated,  wrote  me- 
moirs under  the  direct  inspiration  of  her  friend  and 
admirer  Brantome.  Pierre  de  l'Estoile  (1545-1611)1 
wrote  MSmoires-Journaux — i.e.,  a  diary  of  his  time. 
The  Correspondence  of  Catherine  de  Medici — recently 
edited  by  M.  de  Ferriere — of  Duplessis-Mornay  (1549- 
1623),  and  of  the  Cardinal  D'Ossat  (1557-1604),  which 
have  long  been  known,  the  Negotiations  of  Pierre 
Jeannin  (1546-1632),  the  great  History  of  De  Thou, 
written  in  Latin,  are  all  of  value,  and  are  all  well 
written.  The  list  could  easily  be  swollen,  but  it 
would  be  to  little  purpose  where  space  does  not  allow 
of  more  than  mention.  Prom  the  literary  point  of  view 
they  are  notable  as  showing  that  the  autobiographical, 
anecdotic,  historical,  and,  in  short,  average  practical 
writing  faculty  of  the  French,  which  has  given  their 
literature  its  unrivalled  continuity,  was  in  full  vigour 
during  these  generations,  when,  as  one  is  tempted  to 
think,  men  must  have  been  far  too  intent  on  keeping 
themselves  alive  in  the  prevailing  anarchy  to  have 
leisure  for  the  use  of  the  pen.  Spain,  in  its  happier 
days,  produced  something  approaching  the  French 
historical  and  memoir  work  of  the  later  sixteenth 
century.  Elizabethan  England,  rich  beyond  compari- 
son in  poetic  genius,  has  nothing  like  it  to  show.  It 
could  not  be,  of  course ;  and  yet  we  could  have  spared, 
not  Marlowe,  but  perhaps  Greene  and  Peele,  and 
certainly  Nash,  Lodge  (the  lyrics  apart),  and  Breton, 
to  see  the  Armada,  and  the  voyages  to  the  Isles, 
through  the  eyes  of  an  English  Monluc,  or  the  pacifi- 

1  Ed.  Brunet  et  Champollion,  1875-1881. 


FRENCH   PROSE-WRITERS.  339 

cation  of  Ireland  as  told  by  a  La  Noue  of  our  own, 
or  such  a  picture  of  the  Court  of  Elizabeth  as  could 
have  been  painted  by  the  nearest  conceivable  English 
approach  to  Brantome. 

There  is,  however,  one  piece  of  French  prose  of 
what  may  be  called  the  practical  order — written,  that 
The  satyre  is  to  sav> to  secure  a  definite  business  end — 
Menippee.  which  is  far  too  good  in  itself,  as  well  as 
too  important  in  its  consequences,  to  be  passed  with  a 
mere  mention.  This  is  the  famous,  and  in  some  ways 
still  unrivalled,  Satyre  Me'nippe'e.1  The  book  is  a  small 
collection  of  pamphlets,  burlesques,  and  satiric  verse. 
When  due  precaution  is  taken  to  avoid  exaggeration 
and  misunderstanding,  it  may  be  compared  to  our  own 
Martin  Mar-Prelate  pamphlets.  Both  were  the  work 
of  a  body  of  men  not  individually  of  importance,  who 
yet  produced  a  great  effect  by  combined  action  for  a 
cause.  Each  is  the  beginning  of  journalism  in  its 
own  country.  They  were  nearly  contemporary,  but 
Martin  Mar-Prelate  came  a  little  earlier.  His  dates 
are  1589-1592,  and  the  Satyre  M6nipp6e  belongs  to 
1593  and  1594.  The  comparison  must  not  be  pushed 
further,  since  the  Satyre  MSnippe'e  is  markedly  superior 
to  Martin  in  artistic  skill,  and,  it  must  be  allowed,  in 
dignity  of  purpose  also,  however  kindly  we  may  wish 
to  think  of  the  Puritan  writers.  Neither  is  there  any 
reason  to  suppose  that  any  connection  existed  between 
the  two.  If  the  writers  of  the  Satyre  Me'nippe'e  had  any 
inspiration  other  than  their  own  desire  to  answer  the 

1  Ed.    M.    Ch.    Read,    Paris,    1880,    in    Jouaust's    "  Librairie   des 

Bibliophile*." 


340      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

virulent  sermons  and  speeches  of  the  League,  they 
probably  found  it  in  Erasmus,  and  in  the  Upistolce 
Ohscurorum  Virorum  of  Ulrich  von  Hutten.  The  fact 
that  the  Satyre  and  Martin  appeared  almost  side  by 
side,  only  shows  that  the  causes  which  were  making 
for  the  establishment  of  journalism  were  working  in 
France  as  well  as  in  England.  Use  had  already  been 
made  of  the  printing-press,  the  pulpit,  and,  in  France 
at  least,  of  the  stage,  for  controversy.  But  much  had 
been  written  in  Latin,  whether  of  the  study  or  of  the 
kennel.  The  anti-papal  "  sotties  "  of  Gringore,  played 
by  the  encouragement  of  Louis  XIX,  the  an ti- Church 
farces  of  the  Eeformers,  the  sermons  and  the 
pamphlets  of  the  Xeague,  were  individual  work,  the 
still  uncollected  raw  material  of  possible  journalism. 
The  next  step  was  to  organise  collective  action.  It 
was  done  roughly,  and  unhappily  for  a  party  purpose, 
in  England,  but  in  France  with  skill,  with  much 
literary  finish,  and  for  a  national  cause. 

In  order  to  appreciate  the  full  merit  of  the  Satyre 
Mtnyppde,  the  reader  must  call  to  mind  that  after  the 
murder  of  Henry  III.  his  cousin  of  Navarre 
became  King  of  France  by  inheritance. 
Henry  IY.  had  the  support  not  only  of  his  own  sub- 
jects and  the  Huguenots,  but  of  the  "  Politiques," — the 
moderate  men,  as  we  might  say,  among  the  Eoman 
Catholics.  The  ardent  partisans  of  the  Church  turned 
against  him,  and  banded  themselves  with  the  princes 
of  the  house  of  Guise.  The  Catholic  League,  which 
had  been  first  founded  by  Gaspard  de  Saulx-Tavannes 
nearly  thirty  years   before,  after   the   conspiracy   of 


FKENCH  PROSE- WRITERS.  341 

Amboise,  was  extended,  and  became  a  great  organisa- 
tion for  the  purpose  of  setting  aside  the  heretic  King 
of  Navarre,  and  putting  some  assured  Eomanist  on 
the  throne.  In  reality  it  was  little  more  than  a  cloak 
for  the  ambition  of  the  Guises,  and  the  partisans  who 
saw  a  chance  of  profiting  by  anarchy.  It  had  the 
support  of  the  King  of  Spain.  Paris  was  held,  partly 
by  the  help  of  the  more  fanatical  Eoman  Catholic 
clergy  and  the  mob,  partly  by  a  so-called  Spanish 
garrison — Moors,  Neapolitans,  and  what  not — made 
up  out  of  the  sweepings  of  Philip  II.'s  army.  Even 
the  conversion  of  Henry  did  not  disarm  the  League. 
It  called  a  sham  meeting  of  the  Estates  of  the  realm 
to  debate  the  question  of  setting  him  aside.  At  this 
moment  a  body  of  men  in  Paris  combined  to  assail 
these  so-called  fitats  with  ridicule;  and  when  we 
remember  how  brutally  the  "  Guisards  "  had  disposed 
of  opponents  and  critics,  it  is  hard  to  exaggerate  the 
courage  they  showed. 

The  leader  of  the  band  was  Pierre  Leroy,  canon  of 

the  Sainte   Chapelle.     It  was  to  him  that  the  idea 

first  suggested  itself,  and  he  drew  about 

Its  authors.  °° 

him  his  friends  Gillot,  Passerat,  Eapin, 
Chrestien,  Pithou,  and  Durant.  As  may  well  be 
supposed,  the  early  history  of  an  anonymous  work 
is  somewhat  obscure.  It  was  at  first  a  small  manu- 
script pamphlet,  handed  about  quietly.  Additions 
were  made.  The  verse  seems  to  have  been  intro- 
duced at  the  later  stages.  Whether  it  was  actually 
printed  in  1593  appears  very  doubtful.  The  first 
known   example    is    of    1594,   and,   as   was    natural 


342      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

enough,  the  Satyr e  was  subject  to  a  good  deal  of 
modification.  The  names  of  men  who  had  been 
attacked,  and  who  passed  over  later  to  Henry  IV., 
were  dropped  out.  Even  the  title  was  altered.  The 
first  chosen  was  "Abbrege  et  TArne  des  Estatz  con- 
voquez  a  Paris  en  l'an  1593  le  10  Eebvrier.  Jouxte 
la  relation  de  Mademoiselle  de  la  Lande,  Messieurs 
Domay  et  Victon  Penitens  blancqs."  An  alternative 
title  was  "Le  Catholicum  de  la  Ligue,  1593."  The 
name  of  Satyre  Minippe'e  (taken  from  Lucian)  seems 
to  have  been  given  by  common  consent  rather  than 
by  the  authors,  and  the  first  undoubted  edition  is 
called  "La  Vertu  du  Catholicon  d'Espagne,  avec  un 
Abrege  de  la  tenue  des  Estats  de  Paris  convoquez 
aux  de  Febvrier  1593  par  les  chefs  de  la  Ligue.  Tire 
des  memoires  de  Mademoiselle  de  la  Lande,  alias  la 
Bayonnoise,  et  des  secrettes  confabulations  d'elle  et  du 
Pere  Cornmelaid." 

In  its  final   form   the  Satyre   Me'nippe'e   has  some 
resemblance  in  form,  and  a  marked  likeness  in  spirit, 
its  Mm  and   to  our  own  Anti- Jacobin  as  it  was  in  the 
spirit.  firS£  an(j  most  militant  stage.     The  authors 

of  both  were  fighting  with  a  combination  of  ridicule 
and  argument  against  anarchy,  and  in  the  name  of 
common  -  sense  and  patriotism.  There  is  the  same 
resistance  to  the  foreigner  in  both.  The  Gallican 
clergy  of  the  stamp  of  Leroy  were  no  friends  to  the 
interference  of  the  Pope  in  French  affairs.  That 
Philip  II.  was  a  foreigner  could  be  disputed  by 
nobody ;  and  though  the  Lorraine  princes  had  played 
a  great   part   in   France,   and  were   connected   with 


FRENCH  PROSE- WRITERS.  343 

the  Valois  by  marriage,  they  were  still  considered 
strangers.  The  Satyre  MSnippe'e  opens  by  a  burlesque 
speech  delivered  by  a  quack  in  praise  of  the  Catholi- 
con  or  universal  cure  of  Spain — of  the  bribes  which 
Philip  II.  was  lavishing  in  order  to  promote  the 
misfortunes  of  his  neighbours.  Then  comes  a  de- 
scription of  the  procession  at  the  opening  of  the 
Estates,  and  of  the  tapestry  on  the  walls,  in  which 
the  different  chiefs  of  the  League  are  ridiculed,  and 
the  misfortunes  they  were  bringing  on  the  country 
shown.  Then  Mayenne  makes  a  speech  as  Lieuten- 
ant-General  of  the  kingdom — the  sort  of  speech  he 
would  have  made  if  he  had  told  the  truth.  Various 
churchmen  then  speak — Italian  or  Italianate  priests 
who  were  prepared  to  sacrifice  France  to  the  Pope, 
or  mere  beaters  of  the  drum  ecclesiastic.  Then 
comes  what  is  perhaps  the  best  single  thing  in  the 
Satyre,  the  speech  of .  M.  des  Eieux,  who  speaks  for 
the  noblesse.  The  choice  of  this  man — an  historical 
character  who  was  finally  hanged  as  a  brigand — to 
speak  for  the  nobles  is  in  itself  a  most  ingenious 
stroke.  He  was  a  thorough  military  ruffian  of  the 
worst  stamp,  low-born  and  ignorant,  who  had  obtained 
command  of  a  castle,  and  who  lived  by  plundering 
his  neighbours.  Des  Eieux  begins  by  giving  it  as  his 
opinion  that  nothing  could  prove  the  excellence  of  the 
League  more  fully  than  just  this,  that  the  like  of 
him  could  come  to  speak  for  the  nobles.  He  goes 
on  in  the  same  tone,  which  is  the  swagger  of  a  vulgar 
adventurer  who  feels  himself  safe.  No  more  artful 
way  of  showing  to   what  the  League  was   reducing 


344      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

France  could  have  been  chosen.  The  speech  of  Des 
Eieux  is  attributed  to  Jacques  Gillot,  clerk  to  the 
Parliament  of  Paris.  Then  the  tone  of  burlesque  is 
dropped,  and  a  vigorous  denunciation  of  the  League  is 
delivered  by  M.  d'Aubray  as  the  spokesman  of  the 
Third  Estate,  the  Burgesses.  This,  the  longest  of  all, 
is  said  to  be  the  work  of  Pierre  Pithou.  The  verse, 
partly  scattered  through  the  book  and  partly  col- 
lected at  the  end,  belongs  to  Jean  Passerat,  the 
successor  of  Eamus  at  the  College  Eoyal,  and  to 
Gilles  Durant,  a  lawyer  and  country  gentleman. 
Both  Passerat  and  Durant  wrote  other  verse  of 
excellence. 

All  this  memoir,  history,  and  satire  is  interesting, 
but  no  part  of  it  belongs  to  the  literature  which  every 
thinking  man  in  every  country  has  read,  or  knows 
that  it  would  be  good  to  read.  They  may  be  all  left 
aside,  not  without  loss  indeed,  yet  without  irreparable 
loss.  But  whoever  has  not  read  the  Essays  of  Mon- 
taigne has  missed  something  necessary  for  the  "  criti- 
cism of  life" — the  exposition  of  a  habit  of  thought, 
a  way  of  looking  at  things,  of  discussing  and  deciding 
questions  of  conduct  and  principle,  which  are  not  only 
French  and  peculiar  to  one  time,  but  human  and 
universal. 

Michel  Eyquem,  Seigneur  de  Montaigne,  was  born 
at  the  Chateau  de  Montaigne  in  Perigord,  near  Bor- 
deaux, in  1533.     A  legend,  which  appears 

Montaigne.  . 

to  have  no  foundation,  asserts  that  the 
family  was  of  English  origin.  It  had  risen  by  the 
salt-fish  trade,  and  its  nobility  was  of  recent  origin, 


FRENCH  PROSE- WRITERS.  345 

facts  which  Montaigne  did  not  recognise  so  calmly  as 
a  philosopher  should.  His  father  served  under  Francis 
I.  in  the  wars  of  Italy,  and  increased  the  considerable 
fortune  he  had  inherited,  by  a  rich  marriage  with 
Antoinette  de  Louppes,  or  Lopes,  a  Spanish  Jewess 
by  descent.  Michel  was  educated  at  the  College  of 
Bordeaux  by  Buchanan,  Muretus,  and  other  famous 
scholars.  By  a  fad  of  his  father's,  he  was  surrounded 
from  the  beginning  by  people  who  only  spoke  Latin, 
and  so  learned  the  language  naturally.  His  schooling 
came  to  an  end  when  he  was  thirteen.  Although  he 
inherited  a  strong  frame  from  his  father,  and  did 
possibly  serve  one  or  two  campaigns,  he  applied  him- 
self to  the  law,  and  not  to  arms,  as  a  profession. 
He  held  a  judicial  post,  first  at  Perigueux,  then  at 
Bordeaux,  but  resigned  it  early,  and  retired  to  his 
own  house.  Montaigne  was  known  at  Court,  which 
he  visited  several  times,  even  before  he  published 
the  first  two  books  of  his  Essays  in  1580.  Dur- 
ing one  visit  to  Paris  in  1588  to  superintend  the  pub- 
lication of  the  third  book,  he  was  an  eye-witness  of 
the  "day  of  the  barricades,"  and  was  imprisoned  in 
the  Bastille  by  Leaguers.  He  travelled  abroad,  and 
returned  to  hold  municipal  office  at  Bordeaux,  where 
he  showed  more  caution  than  courage  during  a  visita- 
tion of  the  plague.  He  died  at  his  own  house  of 
Montaigne  in  1592,  just  as  the  long  anarchy  of  the 
wars  of  Beligion,  which  he  had  never  allowed  to 
ruffle  the  calm  of  his  life,  was  coming  to  an  end.1 

1  The  standard  edition  of  Montaigne's  Essays  is  still  that  of  Le 
Clerc,  reprinted  in  1865-66.     There  have  been  two  recent  reprints  of 


34:6      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

The  fame  of  Montaigne  was  great  in  his  own  time, 
and  has  never  suffered  eclipse.  Nor  is  it  possible 
that  it  ever  should,  since,  in  addition  to  personal 
qualities  of  an  amusing  and  attractive  kind,  he  was 
the  thorough  type  of  a  certain  stamp  of  intellect. 
He  was  as  complete  a  Gascon  as  his  countryman 
Monluc,  and  may  even  be  said  to  have  carried  the 
peculiar  quality  of  his  race  to  a  yet  higher  pitch.  Mon- 
luc was  resolved  that  all  the  world  should  know  him 
for  the  astute  and  intrepid  soldier  he  was.  Montaigne 
did  not  condescend  to  justify  himself  by  his  deeds. 
He  asked  the  world  to  be  interested  in  him,  not  as  a 
soldier,  nor  indeed  as  anything,  except  just  a  thinking 
man.     And  the  world  has  never  denied  that  the  man 

and   his    thoughts    were    worth    knowing. 

The  subject  of  his  Essays  is  always  sub- 
stantially Michel  of  Montaigne,  his  health,  his  read- 
ing, his  views  of  men,  things,  and  opinions,  his  habits 
of  mind  and  body.  In  matter,  in  form,  and  in  intel- 
lectual scope  he  is  all  the  world  apart  from  Bran- 
tome,  and  yet  he  is  not  wholly  unlike  the  old  dis- 
appointed courtier  of  the  Yalois,  discoursing  Des 
Hommcs  and  Des  Femmes.  Both  talk  out  all  that 
was  in  them,  with  a  certain  affectation  of  careless- 
ness, but  in  reality  with  thought,  and  no  small  toil 
over  the  manner  of  saying.  During  his  later  years 
Montaigne  employed  himself  much  in    covering  the 

our  own  excellent  and  contemporary  translation  by  John  Florio; 
one,  very  handsome,  in  Mr  Henley's  "Tudor  Translations";  and 
another,  cheap  and  pretty,  edited  by  Mr  Waller,  in  six  small 
volumes. 


FRENCH  PROSE- WRITERS.  347 

margins  of  a  copy  of  the  so  -  called  fifth  edition  of 
his  Essays  with  corrections  and  additions.  The  book 
still  exists  in  the  library  at  Bordeaux.  After  his 
death  his  widow  intrusted  his  friend,  Pierre  de  Brach, 
with  the  task  of  editing  a  revised  edition.  Brach, 
who  had  the  help  of  Montaigne's  adopted  daughter, 
Mdlle.  de  Gournay,  produced  what  was  for  long  the 
accepted  text  in  the  edition  of  1595.  But  though 
Pierre  de  Brach  and  Mdlle.  de  Gournay  worked  with 
care,  they  omitted  a  good  deal,  and  misunderstood 
something.  Successive  editors  in  this  century  have 
laboured  to  correct  their  errors  of  omission  and 
commission,  but  the  text  of  Montaigne  has  never 
yet  been  fixed  to  the  satisfaction  of  exacting  critics. 
It  is  but  natural  that  a  writer  who  deals  with 
permanently  interesting  questions  of  principle  and 
The  scepticism  conduct,  and  who  has  always  been  read, 
of  Montaigne,  should  have  been  diversely  judged  during 
the  very  different  centuries  which  have  passed  since 
his  death.  The  judgments  of  the  seventeenth  and  the 
eighteenth  centuries  on  the  scepticism  of  Montaigne 
are  in  fact  examples  of  a  truth  which  he  has  himself 
most  excellently  stated — namely,  that  we  read  much 
of  ourselves  into  our  authors.  During  the  strong 
Eoman  Catholic  reaction  of  the  seventeenth  century 
his  amused  interest  in  both  sides  of  all  questions,  and 
his  favourite  thesis  that  no  doctrine  is  so  sure  that  we 
are  justified  in  killing  men  for  it,  were  found  exasperat- 
ing by  those  who  were  terribly  in  earnest.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  he  was  praised,  and  accepted  as  a 
forerunner  of  Voltaire,  on  these  very  grounds.     What 


348      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE— LATER    RENAISSANCE. 

one  body  of  critics  called  poorness  of  spirit  and  cold- 
ness of  heart,  another  called  wisdom.  For  that  he 
would  himself  have  been  prepared.  In  the  first  of 
his  Essays,  "  By  divers  meanes  men  come  unto  a  like 
end,"  he  states  what  was  perhaps  the  firmest  of  his 
convictions — to  wit,  that  "  surely  man  is  a  wonderfull, 
vaine,  divers,  and  wavering  subject ;  it  is  very  hard  to 
ground  any  directly-constant  and  uniforme  judgement 
upon  him."  We  shall  perhaps  not  go  far  wrong  if  we 
describe  the  scepticism  of  Montaigne  as  a  constant 
recollection  that  whatever  men  have  said,  thought,  or 
done,  has  been  necessarily  the  work  of  this  "vaine, 
divers,  and  wavering  subject,"  and  is  not  to  be  taken 
too  seriously.  A  wise  man  will  accept  the  social  and 
religious  order  of  his  country,  even  with  its  vices, 
since  we  have  so  little  wisdom  that  our  efforts  at 
amendment  will  probably  produce  more  mischief  than 
they  will  correct.  In  any  case,  what  has  existed  and 
stood  the  test  of  experience  has  more  claim  on  our 
loyalty  than  the  mere  guesses  of  the  reformer.  Yet, 
while  accepting  existing  order,  he  need  not  believe  in 
it  too  much,  and  he  certainly  need  not  deny  himself 
the  pleasure  of  noting  the  innumerable  absurdities  of 
even  the  most  respectable  parts  of  man's  handiwork. 
Science  is  vain,  since  it  is  but  speculation  on  subjects 
we  shall  never  really  understand.  Conduct  is  the 
important  thing.  Do  not  lie,  do  not  be  cruel,  do  not 
be  a  pedant  (on  these  points  indeed  there  was  no 
scepticism  in  Montaigne) ;  do  not  strive  after  unattain- 
able ideals  of  truth  (for  what  is  truth  except  what  we 
think  about  the  causes  and  nature  of  things,  and  what 


FRENCH  PROSE- WRITERS.  349 

are  we  but  "  vaine,  diverse,  and  wavering  subjects  "  ?), 
or  of  virtue,  or  of  chastity.  Let  us  live  our  lives, 
exercising  all  our  faculties  of  body  and  mind — in 
prudent  moderation,  and  with  due  regard  to  our  time 
of  life.  It  is  not  the  greatest  advice  which  can  be 
given  to  man.  If  the  human  race  had  acted  up  to 
Montaigne's  standard  of  wisdom,  there  would  have 
been  no  prophets,  no  saints,  no  martyrs,  hardly  any 
great  thinkers,  or  great  explorers.  It  would  be 
possible  to  follow  Montaigne  and  be  a  haberdasher 
of  small-wares.  One  could  not  follow  him  and  be  a 
bigot,  "une  bonne  ligne  droite  de  ferocite  sotte,"  in 
any  cause,  or  disgrace  knowledge  by  pedantry,  or 
conquest  and  discovery  by  cruelty  and  avarice.  But 
it  is  an  idle  question  whether  he  was  better  or  worse 
than  Luther  or  Saint  Francis  de  Sales.  He  was 
different,  and  he  is  a  perfect  example  of  a  stamp  of 
man  who  will  never  fail  while  the  human  race  lasts 
and  thinks  —  the  sagacious  man  who  is  naturally 
kind  and  honest,  but  is  not  virtuous  in  any  lofty 
sense,  or  capable  of  strong  conviction.  Amid  the 
clash  of  dogmatists,  all  fanatically  sure  they  were 
right,  and  all  cruel,  which  filled  the  sixteenth  century 
with  tumult,  the  voice  of  Montaigne  supplied  some- 
thing which  was  sorely  needed. 

As   a    writer    the    importance    of    Montaigne    can 

hardly  be    exaggerated.      To   him  modern  literature 

owes  the  essay,  which  of  itself  would  be 

His  style.  . 

a  claim  to  immortality.  He  first  set  the 
example  of  discussing  great  questions  in  the  tone  of 
the  man  of  the  world  speaking  to  men  of  the  world. 


350      EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

His  style,  which  can  be  eloquent  to  the  highest 
degree,  is  more  commonly  easy  and  "  savoury "  — 
full,  that  is  to  say,  of  colour  and  character.  His 
amplifications,  and  his  constant  use  of  quotations,  his 
lawless  wanderings  away  from  his  subject,  and  then 
through  many  turnings  back  to  it — when  he  has  a 
subject  at  all — his  amazing  indiscretions  concerning 
his  health,  his  morals,  and  his  family  history,  his  fre- 
quent sudden  appeals  to  the  reader,  as  of  one  speak- 
ing in  confidence  and  on  the  spur  of  the  moment, 
make  up  a  combination  which  cannot  be  defined  in 
its  inexhaustible  variety.  It  is  not  the  least  charm 
of  the  Essays  that  they  invite  desultory  reading.  If 
advice  in  this  matter  were  ever  of  much  value,  we 
might  recommend  the  reader  who  has  Montaigne  to 
begin,  to  start  with  the  "Apologie  for  Eaymond  of 
Sebonde,"  which  will  give  him  the  whole  spirit  and 
way  of  thinking,  and  then  to  read  as  accident  dictates. 
Orderly  study  is  quite  unnecessary  with  an  author 
who  starts  from  no  premiss  to  arrive  at  no  conclusion, 
whose  unity  is  due  not  to  doctrine  but  to  character, 
and  who  "  rays  out  curious  observations  on  life "  all 
illuminated  by  a  vast  learning  and  by  humour. 

The  teaching  of  Montaigne  was  expounded  by 
Pierre  Charron  (1541  - 1603),  a  lawyer,  who  took 
charronand  orders,  and  had  written  against  the  League 
Du  vair.  an(j  ^e  Protestants,  before  he  fell  under 
the  influence  of  the  author  of  the  Essays.  His  most 
famous  —  or  rather,  his  one  surviving  —  work,  the 
TraiU  de  la  Sag 'esse  (1601  ),1  is  a  restatement  in  more 

1  Ed.  Amaury  Duval,  1828. 


FRENCH  PROSE- WRITERS.  351 

scholastic  form  of  the  ideas  of  Montaigne.  Charron 
also  drew  largely,  for  he  was  not  by  any  means  an 
original  writer,  on  Guillaume  du  Yair  (1556-1621), 
Du  Vair,  who  is  considered  one  of  the  best  prose- 
writers  of  his  time,  was  the  author  of  many  treatises 
on  philosophical  subjects ; 1  but  he  is  remembered 
mainly  for  his  famous  Suasion,  or  plea  for  the  Salic 
Law,  delivered  before  the  Estates  summoned  by  the 
League  in  1593.  He  represented  the  magistracy,  and 
it  is  said  that  his  argument  persuaded  the  Estates 
to  reject  the  candidature  of  the  Infanta  of  Spain,  who 
had  been  brought  forward  by  the  extreme  Catholic 
party  as  rival  to  Henry  IV. 

1  CEuvres  Completes,  1641. 


352 


CHAPTEE    XII. 

THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN   ITALY. 

THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITALY — TORQUATO  TASSO — HIS  WORK — THE 
'GERUSALEMME  LIBERATA' — GIORDANO  BRUNO — LITERARY  CHARAC- 
TER  OF   HIS  WORK — GIAMBATT1STA   GUARINI. 

The  Later  Renaissance,  which  was  so  great  in  Spain 
and  in  England,  and  in  France  was  important,  was 
elsewhere  a  time  of  decline,  of  silence,  or  of  very- 
faint  beginnings.  The  literature  of  Germany  has 
been  broken  into  periods  of  vigour,  with  long  in- 
tervals of  silence  between.  The  second  half  of  the 
sixteenth  century  was  one  of  these.  Among  the 
smaller  peoples,  with  Holland  at  their  head,  there 
was  as  yet  little  more  than  the  attempt  to  produce 
literature.  The  case  of  Italy  was  more  fortunate  than 
that  of  Germany.  She  at  least  can  count  two  of  her 
most  interesting  sons  among  the  men  of  letters  of 
this  time,  Tasso  and  Bruno.  But  here  the  decadence 
had  begun,  and  had  made  no  small  progress  towards 
the  sheer  dexterous  futility  which  was  to  be  personi- 
fied in  Marini.     The  spirit  of  the  Renaissance  was 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  IN  ITALY.  353 

worn  out,  and  was  replaced  by  mere  accomplishment, 

and  by  the  nervous  fear  which  is  visible  all  through 

m  T  ,    D     the   life  of  Tasso.     The   Eoman    Catholic 

The  Later  Re- 
naissance in     reaction  was  not  favourable  to  literature. 

It    brought   with    it    the    tyranny,,   or   at 

least   the   predominance,  of   a   religion   which   could 

no  longer  inspire.     The  Popes  of  the  time  endeavoured 

to  make  Eome  moral  by  methods  which  might  have 

commended  themselves  to  the  strictest  sect   of   the 

Puritans ;  and  commendable  as  this  effort  to  restrain 

the  licence  of  the  earlier  Renaissance  and  the  period 

of  the  Italian  wars  may  have  been,  still  it  was  an 

example  of  the  attempt  to  repress  which  was  being 

made  everywhere  in  Italy,  and  which  succeeded,  since 

it  had  only  to  deal  with  men  of  a  weak  generation. 

Giordano  Bruno  was,  indeed,  indisciplined  enough  ;  but 

he  spent  the  active  part  of  his  life  out  of  Italy,  and 

when  he  did  return,  his  fate  was  a  severe  warning 

against  independence  of  character. 

The  life  of  Torquato  Tasso  is  of  itself   enough  to 

show  under  what  a  gloomy  cloud  literature  had  to 

work  in  Italy  all   through  the  later  six- 

Torquato  Tasso.  J  ° 

teenth  century.  It  was  a  life  of  depend- 
ence, and  was  dominated  by  fear — fear  of  rivals,  of 
envy,  of  accusations  of  heresy,  and  even  of  murder. 
That  this  fear  was  not  quite  sane  in  Tasso's  case  is 
true ;  but  though  his  contemporaries  saw  it  to  be  un- 
founded, they  do  not  seem  to  have  thought  it  absurd. 
He  was  born  in  1544,  the  third  son  of  Bernardo  Tasso 
of  Bergamo,  who  was  secretary  to  Ferrante  Sanseverino, 
Prince  of  Salerno.     His  mother  was  Porzia  de  Eossi,  a 

z 


354      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

lady  of  a  distinguished  Neapolitan  family.  Bernardo 
Tasso,  who  was  himself  a  verse-writer,  and  who  gained 
some  fame  in  his  time  as  the  author  of  a  long  epic 
founded  on  the  Amadis  of  Gaul,  was  compelled  to  fly 
when  his  patron  was  driven  from  his  principality  of 
Salerno.  Porzia,  his  wife,  was  detained  in  Naples  by 
her  family,  which  was  meanly  anxious  not  to  pay 
her  dowry.  She  died  without  again  seeing  her  hus- 
band, but  the  young  Torquato  was  allowed  to  return 
to  his  father.  Bernardo,  who  found  a  refuge  in  the 
service  of  the  Dukes  of  Urbino,  sent  his  son  to  the 
famous  legal  university  of  Padua.  Here  Torquato 
read,  but  not  at  the  law,  and  wrote  his  epic  poem  the 
Binaldo — little  to  the  satisfaction  of  his  father,  who, 
though  a  verse  -  writer  himself,  wished  his  son  to 
qualify  for  a  lucrative  trade.  But  the  son  was  re- 
solved to  be  a  poet,  and  not  a  lawyer,  which  decision 
brought  with  it  the  absolute  necessity  of  finding  a 
patron.  The  Cardinal  Luigi  d'Este  introduced  him 
to  the  Court  of  Ferrara.  Tasso  had  already  begun  his 
Jerusalem  Delivered  and  his  play  of  Torrismondo,  and 
had  written  his  Discourses  on  Epic  Poetry.  Alphonso  II. 
d'Este,  the  Duke  of  Ferrara,  received  him,  and  seems 
to  have  treated  him  in  the  main  with  great  kindness. 
The  story  of  Tasso's  stay  at  this  typical  Italian  Court, 
of  his  passion  for  Leonora  d'Este,  of  the  Duke's  dis- 
covery, and  of  the  false  accusation  of  madness,  on 
which  the  poet  was  imprisoned  for  years,  is  one  of  the 
best  known  romances  of  literary  history ;  but  that  it 
is  a  romance  there  can  be  no  doubt.     From  his  early 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN   ITALY.  355 

years  Tasso  seems  to  have  suffered  from  a  continual 
fear  of  persecution  and  the  plots  of  enemies.  When 
he  accompanied  the  Cardinal  Luigi  d'Este  to  Paris,  he 
imagined  that  some  treason  was  being  plotted  against 
him  at  home.  Later  he  thought  he  had  been  accused 
of  heresy,  and  refused  to  be  pacified  by  the  assurances 
of  the  Duke  and  the  head  of  the  Inquisition,  to  whom 
he  subjected  his  writings.  He  fled  twice  from  Ferrara, 
and  twice  came  back.  He  began  to  accuse  the  Duke 
of  intending  to  have  him  murdered,  and  finally  drew 
his  dagger  in  the  Palace  on  a  servant  whom  he  sus- 
pected of  trying  to  poison  him.  Duke  Alphonso  vin- 
dicated his  own  character,  and  also  gave  the  exact 
measure  of  the  morality  of  the  time  by  saying  that 
it  was  absurd  to  suppose  that  he  thought  of  killing 
"  il  Signor  Tasso,"  since  if  he  wished  to  do  so  he  had 
only  to  give  the  order.  At  last,  and  not  until  the 
Duke  had  displayed  a  patience  which  is  sufficient 
evidence  that  he  had  no  animosity  against  his  servant, 
Tasso  in  1579  was  imprisoned  as  mad  in  the  hospital 
of  Saint  Anne.  The  treatment  of  the  mad  was  every- 
where harsh  at  that  time,  but  the  poet  appears  to  have 
received  exceptional  kindness.  Friends  exerted  them- 
selves for  him,  some  from  pity,  others  moved  by  the 
desire  to  be  thought  patrons  of  literature.  In  1586 
he  was  released,  on  condition  that  he  would  not  return 
to  Ferrara.  During  the  last  years  of  his  life  he  wan- 
dered from  one  Italian  Court  to  another,  always  quar- 
relling with  his  patrons,  but  always  finding  protectors. 
He  died  at  Eome  in  1595,  when  he  was  about  to  be 


356      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

crowned  as  Poet  Laureate  on  the  Capitol.  His  Jeru- 
salem Delivered  was  printed  in  a  pirated  edition  during 
his  imprisonment.1 

The  bulk  of  Tasso's  work  is  very  great.  In  addition 
to  the  Einaldo,  and  two  forms  of  the  Jerusalem,  he 
wrote  the  pastoral  play  Aminta,  the 
tragedy  of  Torrismondo,  much  minor  verse, 
many  sonnets,  and  many  treatises  in  prose.  A  large 
number  of  his  letters  have  been  preserved.  In  his 
latter  years,  and  in  the  undeniable  decadence  of  his 
powers,  he  wrote  a  long  poem  in  blank  verse  on  the 
Seven  Days  of  Creation. 

Tasso's  minor  work  is  no  doubt  of  value  for  the 
study  of  his  genius.  His  philosophic  treatises,  mostly 
in  dialogue,  would,  I  presume,  for  I  cannot  profess  to 
speak  of  them  with  knowledge,  be  useful  to  the 
student  of  Italian  thought  under  the  Eoman  Catholic 
reaction.  Even  his  play  of  Torrismondo,  begun  in  his 
youth,  and  finished  after  his  imprisonment  in  the 
hospital  of  Saint  Anne,  has  a  place  in  the  history  of 
the  "classic"  drama.  In  itself  it  is  not  attractive. 
It  is  an  unpleasant,  and  even  rather  commonplace, 
story  of  suicide  and  accidental  incest,  frigidly  told, 
with  all  the  Senecan  apparatus.  The  pastoral  poem 
of  Aminta  is  of  more  historical  importance,  and  has 
some  biographical  interest,  while  the  subject  suited 
Tasso's  faculty  for  tender  images  and  luscious  verse. 
But  he  owes  his  place  in  literature  to  his  Jerusalem 
Delivered. 

Something  has  been  said  of  the  history  of  this  poem. 

1  Opere.     Edited  by  Giov.  Rosini.     Pisa,  33  vols.,  1821-1832. 


THE  LATER  RENAISSANCE  IN   ITALY.  357 

It  was  begun  in  his  youth,  was  continued  during  his 
stay  at  the  Court  of  Ferrara,  was  read  in  parts  to 
his  patrons,  and  subjected  to  the  criticism  of  friends. 
The  desire  to  secure  the  honour  of  the  dedication  for 
the  house  of  Este,  which  had  already  patronised 
Ariosto,  is  said,  very  plausibly,  to  have  had  a  good 
deal  to  do  with  the  Duke's  long-suffering  towards  the 
author.  When  published  it  was  made  the  excuse  for 
a  dispute  between  the  Academies  which  overran  all 
Italy  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  were  already 
become  the  homes  of  mere  word-splitting.  The 
Jerusalem  in  fact  became  almost  an  affair  of  State 
at  Ferrara.  Its  publication  in  a  very  inaccurate  form 
in  a  pirated  edition  during  his  imprisonment  was  one 
of  the  most  bitter,  and  certainly  not  the  least  genuine, 
of  the  grievances  of  a  poet  who  had  an  artistic  care 
about  the  execution  of  the  work  he  published.  The 
pirated  edition  bore  the  name  which  Tasso  had  chosen, 
Godfrey  of  Boulogne,  but  which  he  changed  for 
Gerusalemme  Liberata  in  the  first  authorised  edition  of 
1581.  Under  the  influence  of  the  fretful  piety  of  his 
later  years  he  made  his  ill-advised  recension,  to  which 
he  gave  the  name  of  Gerusalemme  Conquistata. 

The  enduring  popularity  of  the  Jerusalem  Delivered 
in  Italy  has  been  vouched  for  by  such  well-known 

_.  „  stories  as  that  which  tells  how  it  was  sung 

The  Gerus-  o 

aiemme        by   gondoliers   and    country   people    even 
into  this   century.     Ugo   Foscolo   has   re- 
corded that  he  heard   a  passage  chanted  by  galley- 
slaves.      Its    acceptance    among   poets   and   men   of 
letters,  both  in  the  sixteenth  century  and  since,  is 


358      EUEOPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

not  a  matter  of  legend.  Milton  admired  Tasso,  and 
Spenser  did  him  the  signal  honour  of  direct  imitation. 
Acrasia's  Bower  of  Bliss,  and  indeed  the  final  adven- 
ture of  Sir  Guyon  and  the  Palmer  in  the  Second 
Book  of  the  Faerie  Qtoeen,  are  modelled  on,  and  in 
some  passages  are  taken  directly  from,  the  description 
of  the  garden  of  Armida,  and  the  rescue  of  Binaldo  in 
the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  cantos  of  the  Jerusalem. 
The  poem  was  three  times  translated  in  whole  or  in 
part  into  English  before  1600,  and  one  of  these  ver- 
sions, Fairfax's,  has  been  given  rank  as  a  classic.1 

1  The  Godfrey  of  Bulloigne  of  Fairfax  has  been  praised  well  beyond 
the  full  extent  of  its  merits.  The  sober  fact  concerning  it  is  that 
though  the  language  has  a  real  interest,  the  translation  has  not  the 
merit  of  great  accuracy,  and  it  is  wanting  in  those  flashes  of  original 
power  with  which  Fairfax's  contemporaries  seldom  failed  to  redeem 
their  infidelity  to  their  author.  He,  on  the  contrary,  is  too  often  far 
below  Tasso,  and  he  is  addicted  to  the  detestable  practice  of  replacing 
the  simplicity  of  the  Italian  by  classic  commonplaces.  Now  and 
then  he  is  inept,  or  shirks  a  difficulty  which  he  ought  to  have  faced. 
Examples  of  all  three  vices  may  be  found  in  the  beginning  of  the 
fifteenth  canto.     Tasso  opens  with  the  simple  and  direct  words — 

"  Gia  richiamava  il  bel  nascente  raggio 
All'  opere  ogni  animal  clie  'n  terra  alberga." 

For  this  Fairfax  writes — 

"  The  rosy-fingered  morn  with  gladsome  ray 
Rose  to  her  task  from  old  Tithonus'  lap  "— 

the  commonplace  of  a  boy  doing  a  copy  of  Latin  verse.  In  the 
second  stanza,  where  the  Italian  has — 

"  Erano  essi  gia  sorti,  e  1'  arme  intorno 
Alle  robuste  membra  avean  gia  messe  " — 


Fairfax  renders- 


"  They  started  up,  and  every  tender  limb 
In  sturdy  steel  and  stubborn  plate  they  dight. 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN   ITALY.  359 

The  popularity  of  Tasso's  epic  with  those  Italians, 
who  would  inevitably  know  nothing  of  Dante,  and 
very  little  of  Ariosto,  and  the  admiration  expressed  for 
it  by  poets  or  men  of  letters,  are  both  well  justified, 
though  for  different  reasons.  The  Jerusalem  Delivered 
has  a  beauty  of  form  which  naturally  delights 
people  who  have  a  real  love  of  melody,  while  the 
matter  is  no  less  acceptable  to  all  who  are  attracted 
rather  by  the  pretty  and  the  sympathetic  than  by 
the  great  or  brilliant.  The  allegory,  which  Tasso 
himself  afterwards  expounded  at  length,  is  of  the 
order  which  "  bites  "  nobody,  and  we  can  watch  the 
fortunes  of  Tancred  and  Clorinda,  of  Einaldo  and 
Armida,  of  Godfrey  and  the  crusaders,  "  as  if  we  looked 
on  that  scene  through  an  inverted  telescope,  where- 
by the  whole  was  carried  far  away  into  the  distance, 
the  life-large  figures  compressed  into  brilliant  minia- 
tures, so  clear,  so  real,  yet  tiny  elf-like  and  beautified 
as  well  as  lessened,  their  colours  being  now  closer  and 
brighter,  the  shadows  and  trivial  features  no  longer 
visible."     Carlyle  was  kinder  and  less  critical  than 

The  tender  limbs  of  two  hardened  old  soldiers  is  surely  weak. 
At  the  end  of  the  next  stanza,  we  have  in  the  Italian — 

"  E  in  poppa  quella 
Che  guidar  gli  dovea,  fatal  donzella." 

The  word  "fatal,"  an  appropriate  epithet  for  Fortune,  who  sits 
in  the  stern  to  steer  the  boat,  disappears  in  Fairfax,  and  we  get  the 
colourless  line — 

"  Wherein  a  damsel  sate  the  stern  to  guide." 

And  these  are  not  exceptions.  Fairfax  constantly  gives  the  in- 
applicable adjective,  or  the  vague  general  term,  where  Tasso  is  fault- 
less in  his  precision. 


360      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

was  his  wont,  when  he  classed  the  Jerusalem  Delivered 
with  the  Nibelungen  Lied — for  Dresden  china  shep- 
herdesses are  not  more  unlike  the  statues  of  Michel- 
angelo than  are  the  personages  of  Tasso  to  Kriem- 
hilda  or  Hagen  von  Tronegk.  Yet  he  has  summed  up 
the  general  impression  left  by  the  poem,  as  of  a  small, 
graceful,  and,  in  spite  of  its  great  historical  original, 
unimportant  series  of  events  transacting  itself  without 
passion.  There  is  little  life  in  its  heroes  and  heroines. 
We  never  hear  the  "  dreadful  clamour  "  of  battle,  and 
the  duels  of  the  champions  smack  of  the  school  of  arms, 
for  Tasso,  though  no  fighter,  was  an  accomplished 
swordsman.  Yet  the  story  is  unquestionably  pretty, 
and  the  tiny  elf-like  figures  have  charm.  To  the  poet 
and  the  man  of  letters,  though  his  fame  is  less  in  the 
world  than  it  was,  Tasso  must  always  be  admirable, 
because  he  was  a  thorough  workman.  He  was  the 
poet  of  a  decline.  The  choice  of  words,  the  use  of  the 
file,  the  avoidance  of  improprieties  of  metre,  are  more 
with  him  than  inspiration.  But  he  did  at  least  reap 
the  benefit  of  all  that  his  predecessors  had  done  for 
the  language,  and  he  left  a  finished  example  of  the 
"learned"  poetry  of  Southern  Europe  in  the  later 
sixteenth  century. 

It  would  tax  the  power  of  the  greatest  creative 
dramatist  to  draw  two  conceivable  human  beings  who 
Giordano  should  differ  so  widely  as  Tasso  and  his 
Bmno.  onjy  Italian  contemporary  who  can  be 
said  to  stand  on  a  corresponding  level  of  genius — 
Giordano  Bruno.  The  Nolan,  to  give  him  the  title 
which  he  habitually  used,  was  probably  the  more  con- 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN   ITALY.  361 

siderable  man  of  the  two  in  intrinsic  power,  while 
both  his  life  and  his  character  are  more  interesting. 
But  then  he  is  incomparably  more  difficult  to  under- 
stand. I  cannot  profess  to  deal  with  what,  to  the 
majority  of  those  who  have  paid  much  attention  to 
his  work,  is  most  valuable  in  him — his  philosophic 
ideas,  and  the  influence  he  may  have  had  on  later 
thinkers.  His  life  is  of  the  kind  which  it  is  a  pleasure 
to  tell,  in  spite  of  the  final  tragedy,  so  full  is  it  of 
incident  and  of  manifestations  of  a  certain  stamp  of 
character.1  Giordano  Bruno  was  born  at  Nola,  near 
Naples,  in  1548.  His  father  was  a  soldier,  and  his 
mother  a  German  woman.  He  became  a  Dominican 
friar  very  early,  and  his  unruly  character  brought 
him  speedily  into  difficulties  with  his  superiors.  Be- 
fore he  was  twenty  he  fled  from  his  Order,  and 
escaped  to  Geneva  by  way  of  Genoa.  This  was  in 
1576.  For  fourteen  years  he  led  a  wandering  life. 
His  movements  can  be  traced  from  Geneva  to  Lyons, 
thence  to  Toulouse,  Paris,  England,  once  more  to  Paris, 
and  from  thence  to  Wittenberg,  Prague,  and  Prank- 
fort.  Wherever  he  went  he  asked  leave  to  teach,  and 
he  speedily  entangled  himself  in  a  quarrel  with  the 
authorities.  He  defended  the  doctrines  of  Copernicus, 
and  he  expounded,  more  or  less  obscurely,  his  doctrines 
on  the  soul  and  the  nature  of  man.  Bruno  had  an 
"  art  of  memory  "  which  was  founded  upon,  or  was  an 
adaptation  of,  the  curious  reasoning  machine  invented 
by  Eaymond  Lully,  the  Catalan  scholastic  and  mystic 

1  Life  of  Giordano  Bruno,  by  Mr  L.  Frith :  London,  1897.      Opere 
de  Giordano  Bruno,  ed.  Wagner  :  Leipzig,  1830. 


3G2      EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

of  the  thirteenth  century.  Even  if  I  could  profess  to 
understand  his  doctrines,  which  I  do  not,  this  would 
not  be  the  place  to  expound  them.  What  does  appear 
very  clearly  is,  that  he  was  a  man  of  extreme  and 
passionate  arrogance.  The  doctrine  he  most  certainly 
held  is,  that  the  Nolan  was  the  one  man  who  had  even 
a  glimpse  of  the  only  important  truths,  and  that  official 
teachers  who  did  not  accept  him  at  his  own  valuation 
were  pigs,  dogs,  brutes,  and  beasts.  He  poured  these 
epithets  over  the  heads  of  houses  at  Oxford,  whither 
he  had  been  taken  by  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  who  was 
kind  to  him,  and  on  whom  he  may  have  had  some 
influence.  The  only  place  in  which  he  escaped  a 
violent  quarrel  with  authority  was  at  Wittenberg. 
Even  there  he  could  not  rest,  and  he  committed  him- 
self to  a  public  and  sweeping  denunciation  of  the 
Papacy.  At  last  he  received  an  invitation  from  a 
Venetian  magnifico  of  the  house  of  Mocenigo  to  come 
and  be  his  teacher.  Mocenigo  had  heard  of  Bruno's 
"  art  of  memory,"  and  probably  also  believed  him  to 
be  a  wizard  who  could  make  gold.  In  an  evil  hour 
Bruno  accepted  the  invitation,  and  went  to  Venice  on 
the  hopeless  errand  of  making  Mocenigo  so  wise  that 
the  Council  of  Ten  would  no  longer  be  able  to  treat 
him  as  a  person  of  no  importance.  Within  a  very 
few  months  this  strange  bargain  bore  its  fruit.  The 
magnifico  discovered  that  he  was  no  wiser  than  before, 
and  that  so  far  from  being  richer,  he  had  given  money 
to  the  Nolan  for  which  no  equivalent  had  been  re- 
turned.    He  accused  his  teacher  of  being  a  cheat ;  and 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN   ITALY.  363 

Bruno,  whose  temper  had  never  been  under  restraint, 
answered,  with  more  truth  than  prudence,  that  his 
employer  was  a  fool.  Mocenigo  denounced  him  to 
the  Inquisition.  The  Pope  claimed  him,  and  after 
some  demur  he  was  surrendered  by  the  Serene  Ke- 
public.  On  his  trial  before  the  Inquisition  Bruno 
protested  that  he  was  a  loyal  son  of  the  Church,  and 
that  if  he  had  spoken  heresy  it  was  when  he  was 
speaking  philosophically,  and  not  theologically.  The 
distinction  would  not  serve,  and  he  was  condemned  to 
death.  Whether  he  was  burnt  in  the  body  or  only  in 
effigy  has  been  disputed.  The  balance  of  evidence  is 
in  favour  of  the  contention  that  he  actually  suffered. 
In  that  case  the  date  of  his  death  is  1599. 

Some  anti-clerical  writers  on  the  Continent,  and  a 

few   Englishmen   who   sympathise    with   them,  have 

been  attracted  to  Bruno  because  they  can 

Literary  char-  .  , 

actero/his  use  his  name  as  a  weapon  in  their  warfare 
work'  with  ecclesiastical  authority.    It  is  needless 

to  add  that  numbers  quote  him  as  an  example  of 
papal  tyranny  who  have  never  made  the  certainly 
not  inconsiderable  effort  required  to  read  any  one  of 
his  treatises.  We  can  speak  of  him  here  only  as  a 
man  of  letters,  and  can  put  aside  his  Latin  treatises 
and  purely  philosophic  work.  His  wandering  life, 
and  perhaps  the  restless  explosive  nature  of  the  man, 
made  it  impossible  for  him  to  produce  books  on  a 
large  scale.  Bruno  was  essentially  a  writer  of 
pamphlets,  which  he  produced  as  opportunity  served. 
Three  of  these  may  be  mentioned  here  as  especially 


364      EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

characteristic  of  the  Nolan's  genius  and  spirit — La 
Ccna  del  le  Ccneri  ('The  Ash  Wednesday  Supper'), 
dedicated  to  Castelnau  de  Mauvissiere,  French  ambas- 
sador in  London ;  the  Spaccio  delta  Bestia  Trionfante 
('  The  Driving  out  of  the  Triumphant  Beast ')  ;  and  Gli 
Eroici  Furori  ('  The  Heroic  Furies '),  the  latter  two 
dedicated  to  Sir  Philip  Sidney.  All  are  in  dialogue, 
and  the  last-named  contains  much  verse.  Although 
he  excuses  himself  for  part  of  what  appears  in  Spaccio 
delta  Bestia  Trionfante  by  saying  that  it  is  the  person- 
ages who  speak  in  their  character,  not  he,  the  dialogue 
form  (the  most  difficult  perhaps  of  all  in  literature) 
does  not  appear  to  me  to  be  well  managed.  There  is 
too  much  of  the  Nolan,  and  the  other  personages  are  apt 
to  be  too  obviously  dummies,  who  either  repeat  him, 
or  are  put  up  merely  to  be  knocked  over.  But  this 
in  itself  is  typical  of  the  author.  The  dialogues  are 
the  literary  expression  of  the  very  remarkable  human 
being  who  was  Giordano  Bruno,  the  most  volcanic 
and  fuliginous  of  men.  He  is  for  ever  bursting  into 
rockets  of  rhetoric,  while  the  epithets  fly  out  in  sheets 
as  of  sparks  from  an  anvil.  What  he  means  or  is 
endeavouring  to  prove  is  far  from  being  always  clear, 
not  because  his  language  is  obscure,  for  on  the  con- 
trary his  sentences  are  commonly  simple  enough,  but 
because  there  was  always  far  more  passion  and 
emotion  in  Giordano  Bruno  than  reasoning  power. 
The  title  of  his  dialogues,  '  The  Heroic  Furies,'  is  in 
a  way  a  description  of  his  whole  work.  There  is  in 
him  a  constant  heroic  fury  of  effort  towards  some 
vaguely  indicated  manifestations  of  individual  force 


THE   LATER   RENAISSANCE   IN   ITALY.  365 

and  greatness.  This  of  itself  is  attractive.  With  all 
his  smoky  obscurity  there  is  a  very  real  fire  in 
Giordano  Bruno,  which  finds  its  best  expression  in 
verse.  Whether  he  is  profitable  to  read  is  perhaps 
doubtful,  but  he  is  most  interesting  to  look  at.  He 
was  a  real  Faust,  who  strove  to  grasp — 

"  Was  die  Welt 
Im  Innersten  zusammenhalt ; " 

who  thought  he  had  read  the  riddle,  and  who  justified 
an  illimitable  intellectual  arrogance,  often  superbly 
expressed,  by  his  imaginary  discovery. 

The  fall  from  Tasso  and  Bruno  to  any  of  their 
contemporaries  is  very  great.  There  was  abundant 
interest  of  a  kind  in  literary  matters,  there  was  no 
want  of  criticism,  and  the  Academies  were  active. 
The  long  controversy  over  the  Jerusalem  in  which 
Tasso  allowed  himself  to  be  entangled  is,  if  valuable 
for  nothing  else,  at  least  a  proof  that  Italians  read 
poetry,  and  could  talk  about  it.1  What  they  could 
not  at  this  period  do  was  to  produce  anything  original 
and  valuable — with  the  exception  of  Tasso  himself, 
and  of  Bruno.  The  once  famous  Pastor  Fido  of  Giam- 
battista  Guarini  (1537-1612)  is  in  fact  a  terrible 
example  of  what  may  happen  to  a  literature  when 
its  writers  have  become  extremely  cultivated  in  all 
that  is  mere  matter  of  language,  but  have  unfortu- 
nately nothing  to  say — or,  if  they  have  something  to 

1  This  controversy  has  its  place  in  every  life  of  Tasso,  and  is  told  at 
length  by  Serassi,  Vita  dc  Tasso:  Bergamo,  1790.  My  own  trifling 
acquaintance  with  it  has  given  me  the  impression  that  it  can  be 
profitable  to  no  mortal,  except  perhaps  a  historian  of  criticism. 


366       EUROPEAN   LITERATURE LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

say,   are    cowed   into    insignificance   by    the   fear   of 
compromising  themselves.1 

Guarini  was  a  man  of  character,  a  little  querulous, 
and  afflicted  by  a  vanity  which  caused  him  to  be  for 
ever  comparing  himself  to  Tasso,  and  complaining  of 
his  contemporary's  greater  fame,  but  by  no  means 
without  parts  or  knowledge.  Yet  his  Pastor  Fido  is 
a  mere  echo  of  the  Aminta.  Guarini's  play  —  if 
play  it  can  be  called  —  was  first  acted  at  Turin  in 
1585,  and  was  published  in  Venice  in  1590.  From 
the  Aminta,  and  through  the  Pastor  Fido,  came  the 
line  of  the  Italian  literary  opera  of  later  times.  The 
verse  is  flowing  with  touches  of  a  somewhat  sensual 
lusciousness — but  withal  it  is  nerveless  and  imitative. 

1  II  Pastor  Fido.     Verona,  1735. 


367 


CHAPTER     XIII. 


CONCLUSION. 


The  wealth  of  the  period  which  we  here  call  the  Later 
Renaissance  makes  the  task  of  giving  the  results  of 
a  survey  of  its  manifold  activities  one  of  extreme 
difficulty.  It  is,  indeed,  sufficiently  easy  to  point  out 
the  common  element  of  the  time — namely,  the  revival 
or  the  development  of  the  literary  genius  of  Spain, 
England,  and  France,  under  the  influence  of  the 
classic  models,  and  of  Italy.  In  Italy  itself  the 
classic  impulse  had  been  felt  earlier  and  had  borne 
its  best  fruits  before  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  The  time  there  was  one  of  decadence. 
Tasso  and  Giordano  Bruno  are  unquestionably,  though 
in  widely  different  ways,  writers  of  original  force. 
But  the  author  of  the  Jerusalem  Delivered  was  a 
survivor, — one,  too,  who  had  lived  into  an  unhappy 
time.  His  weakness  of  health  and  character  may 
have — or  rather  must  have — made  him  suffer  with 
exaggerated  acuteness  from  the  forces  which  were 
weighing   on   the    intellect   of   Italy.      Yet    on   that 


368      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

very  account  he  shows  only  the  more  clearly  the 
exhaustion  of  the  race,  and  the  deadening  influence 
of  the  Eoman  Catholic  revival.  As  for  Bruno,  interest- 
ing, and  in  a  way  attractive,  figure  as  he  is,  it  is 
doubtful  whether  he  can  be  said  to  have  had  any 
literary  influence  at  all.  His  modern  fame  is  even 
not  quite  legitimate,  since  he  owes  it  in  some  measure 
to  the  circumstances  of  his  death.  In  his  own  age 
he  fell  rapidly  into  obscurity.  He  also  had  lived 
into  an  unhappy  time,  though  he  bore  himself  in  it 
very  differently  from  Tasso.  Too  Italian  to  reconcile 
himself  to  Calvinism  or  Lutheranism,  too  independent 
in  mind  to  be  an  obedient  son  of  the  Church,  from 
the  moment  he  was  asked  for  more  than  mere  out- 
ward conformity  to  ceremonies,  he  was  destined  to 
be  crushed  between  hammer  and  anvil  in  an  age  of 
religious  strife.  There  was  no  room  for  independence 
of  mind  in  Italy,  and  there  was  to  be  none  for  long,  as 
the  lives  of  Galileo  and  of  Fra  Paolo  Sarpi  were  to 
show.  It  required  all  the  power,  and  the  strong  poli- 
tical anti-papal  spirit  of  Venice,  to  preserve  Fra  Paolo. 
In  literature  nothing  was  any  longer  quite  safe  except 
the  more  or  less  elegant  presentment  of  harmless 
matter.  Tasso  did  the  utmost  which  it  was  now 
allowed  to  an  Italian  poet  to  achieve.  Beyond  him 
there  could  only  be  mere  echo,  as  in  the  case  of 
Guarini.  Beyond  Guarini  the  downward  path  of 
Italian  literature  led  only  to  the  preciosities  and 
affectations  of  Marini. 

The  difficulty  of  summing  up  and  defining  becomes 
really  sensible  when  an  attempt  has  to  be  made  to 


CONCLUSION.  369 

estimate  the  different  ways,  and  the  different  degrees, 
in  which  the  influence  of  the  Eenaissance  made  itself 
felt  in  Spain,  England,  and  France.  In  all  three 
countries  it  met  a  strong  national  genius  which  it 
could  stimulate,  but  could  not  affect  in  essentials. 
Garcilaso,  Spenser,  and  Eonsard  were  all  equally  in- 
tent on  making  a  new  poetry  for  their  countries,  and 
all  three  succeeded.  Yet  they  remained  respectively 
a  Spaniard,  an  Englishman,  and  a  Frenchman,  and  in 
their  works  were  as  unlike  one  another  as  they  were 
to  their  common  models. 

It  is,  I  think,  fairly  accurate  to  say  that  the  Ee- 
naissance influenced  each  of  the  three  Western  coun- 
tries with  increasing  force  in  the  order  in  which  they 
are  arranged  here.  Spain  felt  it  least  and  France 
most.  The  case  is  emphatically  one  for  the  use  of  the 
distinguo.  When  we  wish  to  measure  the  influence 
which  one  literature  has  had  on  another,  it  is  surely 
very  necessary  to  keep  the  form  and  the  spirit  well 
apart.  When  only  the  bulk  of  what  was  written,  and 
the  bare  form,  and  the  mere  language,  are  allowed 
for,  then  it  is  obvious  that  the  Eenaissance  did  affect 
Spain  very  much.  The  hendecasyllabic,  the  prevailing 
use  of  the  double  rhyme,  the  ottava  rima,  the  capi- 
tolo,  and  the  canzone,  were  all  taken  by  the  Spaniards 
with  slavish  fidelity.  The  very  close  connection  be- 
tween the  languages  and  the  peoples  may  have  made 
this  minute  imitation  inevitable.  Again,  it  is  not  to 
be  denied  that  Italian  had  a  marked  influence  on 
literary  Castilian  as  it  was  written  in  the  later  six- 
teenth century.     Very  strict  critics  have  noted  the 

2  A 


370      EUROPEAN    LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

presence  of  Italian  constructions  in  Cervantes.  The 
point  is  not  one  on  which  I  care  to  speak  as  having 
authority,  and  for  two  reasons.  Experience  only  in- 
creases my  sense  of  the  danger  of  expressing  opinions 
as  to  what  is  legitimate  in  a  language  which  is  not 
one's  own  —  and  even  in  one  which  is.  Then,  too, 
before  a  new  phrase  is  condemned  for  being  foreign, 
we  have  to  settle  the  preliminary  questions,  Was  it 
taken  from  a  sister  tongue  or  not  ?  Was  it  superfluous 
or  not  ?  The  Spaniard  who  wishes  to  say,  "  Of  two 
things  the  one,"  &c,  and  who  uses  the  words  "  De  dos 
cosas,  una,"  is  guilty  of  a  Gallicism,  and  is  wrong,  be- 
cause his  own  Castilian  supplies  him  with  the  terser  and 
equally  lucid  formula,  "  De  dos,  una."  Yet  the  French 
original  might  have  been  taken  with  profit,  and  very 
legitimately,  if  it  had  been  wanted,  since  it  comes  from 
a  kindred  tongue,  and  does  no  violence  to  the  genius 
of  Spanish.  Such  a  word  as  "  reliable  "  is  an  offence 
mainly  because  it  is  displacing  an  excellent  equivalent, 
and  because  in  itself  it  is  a  barbarism  only  to  be  ex- 
cused on  the  ground  of  necessity. 

Yet  while  noting  that  Italian  models  were  profusely 
imitated  in  Spain  and  Portugal,  and  that  Castilian  was 
perfected  as  a  literary  instrument  by  Italian  influence, 
we  can  still  maintain  that  the  Eenaissance  bore  less 
fruit  in  the  Peninsula  than  in  France  or  England.  By 
"fruit"  we  ought  to  mean  not  mere  writing,  be  its 
mechanical  dexterity  what  it  may,  but  that  combina- 
tion of  form  and  matter  which  makes  literature,  and 
which  before  we  can  call  it  "  national "  must  savour  of 
the  qualities  of  some  one  race.     Now,  when  we  look  at 


CONCLUSION.  371 

the  literary  activity  of  the  Peninsula  during  the  Golden 
Age,  we  can  find  very  little  which  will  stand  the  triple 
test  in  matter,  form,  and  national  character,  and  of 
which  we  can  yet  say  that  it  shows  the  spirit  of  the 
Eenaissance.  Portugal  can  be  left  aside  with  the  due 
passing  salute  to  the  great  name,  and  the  real,  though 
hardly  proportionate,  merit  of  Camoens.  What  else 
we  find  there1  is  no  more  than  a  somewhat  weaker  ver- 
sion of  the  learned  poetry  of  Spain,  of  which  it  has  to 
be  said  that  it  might  be  deducted  without  reducing  the 
place  of  Spanish  literature  in  the  world.  All  men  who 
have  written  well  are  entitled  to  their  honour.  They 
were  skilful  workmen,  and  that  too  in  no  mean  matter. 
Yet  there  is  a  wide  difference  between  the  man  of  whom 
we  can  say  that  if  he  had  never  taken  pen  in  hand,  his 
form  and  his  matter  might  yet  be  found  in  equal  per- 
fection elsewhere  and  in  foreign  tongues,  and  that  other 
of  whom  we  are  bound  to  say  that  if  he  had  remained 
silent  then  something  would  have  been  missing  which 
no  other  race  could  have  supplied.  Now,  if  Boscan 
had  never  taken  the  advice  of  Navagiero,  if  Garcilaso 
had  never  written,  if  all  the  learned  poets  had  remained 
silent,  then  Spain  would  not  have  shown  her  capacity 
to  produce  men  who  could  handle  Italian  metres  com- 
petently— and  yet  her  place  in  the  literature  of  the 
world  would  be  essentially  what  it  is.  The  Celestina, 
from  which,  through  the  Novela  de  Picaros,  came  Le 

1  The  names  of  Corte-Real  (1540-1593),  P.  de  Andrade  (1576-1660), 

Sa  de  Menezes  ( ?-1664),  may  represent  this  class.     Others,  with 

the  classical  prose  of  Vieira  and  G.  de  Andrade,  which  continued 
the  work  of  Barros  (1496-1570),  may  be  referred  to  in  the  next 
volume. 


372      EUROPEAN  LITERATURE — LATER  RENAISSANCE. 

Sage  and  Smollett  and  Dickens,  would  remain,  and  so 
would  the  Amadis  of  Gaul,  the  romances,  the  comedia, 
Don  Quixote,  the  great  adventurers,  and  Santa  Teresa — 
all  in  short  that  makes  Spain  in  literature. 

And  now,  allowing  that  there  was  something  Spanish 
which  found  adequate  expression  in  the  Golden  Age, 
and  is  also  the  best  of  the  national  literature,  there 
comes  the  difficulty,  which  I  dread  to  find  insuperable, 
of  finding  a  definition  of  that  something.  To  say  that 
there  is  Spanish  quality  in  las  cosas  de  Uspana,  and 
that  this  is  why  they  are  Spanish,  is  the  explanation  of 
Moliere's  doctors.  Again,  it  is  mere  reasoning  in  a 
circle  to  begin  by  taking  it  for  granted  that  the  learned 
poets  who  copied  the  Italian  forms  were  not  truly 
Spanish,  and  that  therefore  Spain  was  not  in  essentials 
influenced  by  the  Eenaissance.  Either  form  of  ab- 
surdity is  to  be  avoided.  Perhaps  the  only  way  of 
escape  lies  in  defining  what  we  mean  by  the  spirit  of 
the  Eenaissance.  Without  professing  to  be  equal  to 
so  great  a  task,  it  is  permissible  to  assert  that  there  are 
certain  notes  which  we  describe  as  of  the  Eenaissance, 
and  to  which  the  Italian,  the  Frenchman,  or  the  Eng- 
lishman gave  expression  in  forms  proper  to  himself. 
A  love  of  beauty,  a  sense  of  joy,  a  vehement  longing 
for  strong  expressions  of  individual  character  and  of 
passion,  a  delight  in  the  exercise  of  a  bold,  inquisi- 
tive intellect — all  these,  and  the  reaction  from  them, 
which  is  a  deep  melancholy,  are  the  notes  of  the  Ee- 
naissance. In  the  learned  poetry  of  Spain  they  are 
rarely  heard.  The  commonplaces  of  form,  with  here 
and  there  a  piety  and  patriotism  which  are  mediaeval 


CONCLUSION.  373 

and  Spanish,  are  given  in  their  stead.  Therefore  it  is 
quite  fair  to  say  that  the  Spaniard  was  not  greatly 
influenced  by  the  Eenaissance — that  there  was  some- 
thing in  it  not  congenial  to  him. 

There  remains  the  difficulty  of  saying  exactly  what 
is  the  Spanish  quality  of  the  true  cosas  de  Uspafia. 
Mr  Ford,  who  knew  the  flavour  well,  gave  it  a  name 
— the  oorracha — which,  being  interpreted,  is  the  wine- 
skin, and  the  smack  it  lends  to  the  juice  of  the  grape. 
The  Spaniards  say  that  there  are  three  natural  per- 
fumes, and  the  first  of  them  is  the  smell  of  the  dry 
earth  after  rain.  The  horracha,  and  the  pungent  scent 
of  the  "dura  tellus  Iberige"  when  wet,  are  not  to 
everybody's  taste.  Neither  is  their  equivalent  in 
literature,  except  where  we  find  it  purified  and 
humanised  by  the  genius  of  Cervantes.  There  has  at 
all  times  been  little  love  of  beauty  in  the  Spaniard, 
and  not  much  faculty  for  ideal  perfection  of  form. 
His  greatest  painting  is  realistic,  the  exact  forcible 
rendering  of  the  things  seen  with  the  eye  of  the  flesh, 
selected,  arranged,  kept  in  their  proper  proportions  in 
the  picture,  but  rarely  imagined.  The  things  seen  need 
not  be  the  vulgar  realities  of  life  only.  Velasquez  is 
every  whit  as  real  in  his  presentment  of  the  frigid 
dignity  of  the  King,  or  in  the  "  Lances,"  as  he  is  in 
the  "  Spinners  "  or  the  "  Water- Seller."  Zurbaran's 
friars  are  perfectly  real,  and  their  ecstatic  devotion 
was  also  chose  vue.  It  is  the  extent  of  his  range  of 
vision  which  gives  Velasquez  his  solitary  eminence 
among  Spanish  painters.  Among  their  brother  artists, 
the  men  of  letters,  there  is  the  same  faculty  for  seeing 


374      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

and  reproducing  the  common  life,  though  this  must 
be  understood  to  include  that  devotion  to  the  Church 
which  was  far  from  being  the  least  genuine  thing  in 
Spain.  All  did  not  see  with  the  same  breadth  of 
vision.  A  Velasquez  is  rare.  It  is  comparatively 
easy  to  be  Zurbaran.  As  a  rule  the  Spaniard  could 
express  types  better  than  individuals.  The  jealous 
husband,  the  adventurer,  heroic  as  in  Amadis,  or 
rascally  as  in  Lazarillo,  a  rigid  ideal  of  honour,  an 
orthodox  pattern  of  piety,  are  what  the  Spaniard  gives 
us — these,  and  the  stirring  action  of  which  they  form 
a  part.  He  drew  from  the  world  he  saw  around  him, 
and  fitted  his  materials  into  a  pattern  for  the  stage, 
or  for  the  story.  The  gout  du  tcrroir,  the  essentially 
Spanish  borracha,  is  on  it  all.  The  flavour  is  not 
delicate.  There  is  little  gaiety  in  the  Spaniard,  but 
instead  of  it  a  hard  jocularity.  He  very  rarely  says 
the  profound  and  universally  true  thing.  It  would 
be  hard  to  make  a  collection  of  "  beauties  "  from  his 
literature.  In  so  far  as  he  has  helped  the  general 
literature  of  the  world,  it  has  been  by  supplying  a 
model  of  machinery  for  the  play  and  the  prose  story. 
Therefore  his  literature  stands  apart  in  the  modern 
world.  If  you  are  to  enjoy  it  you  must  be  prepared 
to  be  satisfied  with  the  action,  the  ideal  of  honour, 
the  enthusiastic  piety  which  he  can  give.  And  to 
enjoy  them  you  must  read  them  in  his  own  Castilian. 
All  translation  is  as  the  back  of  the  tapestry,  but  no 
original  loses  more  than  does  the  Spaniard  when  he  is 
divested  of  his  own  language  and  lets  slip  the  merits 
of  its  terse  gravity,  its  varied  picturesque  force. 


CONCLUSION.  375 

In  Spain,  then,  the  Eenaissance  met  something  on 
which  it  could  secure  no  hold,  something  in  a  sense 
barbarous,  not  quite  European,  and  recalcitrant  to 
all  classic  influences.  In  England  it  met  a  strong 
national  genius,  but  not  one  which  was  entirely  alien. 
Sidney,  Spenser,  and  Marlowe  showed  the  influence  of 
the  Eenaissance,  not  as  mere  imitators  of  forms,  but 
as  Englishmen,  and  yet  fully.  In  Shakespeare  it  was 
included  with  much  more.  Its  love  of  beauty  and  its 
sense  of  form  were  never  better  expressed  than  in  the 
lyrics.  The  difference  between  the  two  nations  is 
profound.  The  Spaniard  either  copied  the  mere  form, 
or  produced  what  one  feels  would  have  come  as  a 
natural  growth  from  the  Middle  Ages,  the  Libro  de 
Cdballerias,  the  Novela  de  Picaros,  the  Auto  Sacra- 
mental, and  even  the  comedia,  in  which  no  trace  of  the 
classic  influence  is  to  be  seen.  A  drama  which  is  in 
no  sense  classic  might  have  developed  from  the 
morality  and  the  farce.  As  much  might  be  said  of 
the  form  of  the  English  drama.  Seneca  might 
have  been  forgotten,  and  Tansillo  might  never  have 
written  (without  Seneca  he  never  would  have 
written  as  he  did),  as  far  as  the  construction  of  the 
English  play  is  concerned.  But  then  much  of  the 
Eenaissance  spirit  did  pass  into  Elizabethan  liter- 
ature. We  could  not  deduct  what  it  shared  with 
Italy  without  fatal  loss.  The  genius  of  Spenser  could 
perhaps  have  dispensed  with  a  teacher,  but  as  a  matter 
of  fact  it  did  not.  With  no  model  save  Chaucer  he 
would  yet  have  been  one  of  the  greatest  of  poets. 
He    would   not   have  been  exactly  the  poet   he  was 


376      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

without  Ariosto,  Tasso,  and  Du  Bellay.  Shakespeare 
had,  of  all  sons  of  Adam,  the  least  need  to  borrow, 
and  yet  without  the  influence  of  the  Eenaissance 
we  should  not  have  the  Sonnets,  Venus  and  Adonis, 
The  Rape  of  Lucrece,  or  many  passages  in  the  plays. 
The  English  genius,  in  fact,  accepted  and  absorbed  the 
Eenaissance  without  losing  its  native  independence. 
All  the  manifestations  of  its  freedom  were  not 
equally  admirable.  The  wild  incoherence  of  the  early 
dramatists  is  not  good  in  itself.  When  we  see  it  at 
its  worst,  we  are  half  tempted  to  wish  that  Greene 
and  Marlowe  had  been  more  subservient.  Yet  it  was 
good  in  so  far  as  it  was  a  striving  after  an  ideal  both 
national  and  good.  It  was  the  necessary  preparation 
for  Shakespeare  and  the  great  things  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan drama.  If  the  time  was  less  mighty  in  prose 
than  in  verse,  yet  the  germs  of  all  that  was  to  come 
were  in  Hooker.  He  had  the  secret  of  lucid  arrange- 
ment, the  art  of  dealing  with  the  greatest  questions 
in  his  own  tongue,  and  in  a  form  at  once  unaffected, 
instantly  intelligible  to  the  average  thoughtful  man, 
and  yet  eloquent  where  the  occasion  required  him  to 
rise  above  the  usual  level  of  speech. 

The  natural  aptitude  of  the  French  for  discipline  in 
literature,  and  their  tendency  to  form  schools,  to  set  up 
a  doctrine,  and  to  reject  all  that  is  not  compatible  with 
it,  have  never  been  more  strongly  shown  than  during 
the  Later  Eenaissance.  Other  influences  were  at  work. 
It  would  be  very  rash  to  say  that  classic  or  Italian 
models  had  a  visible  influence  on  Carloix's  memoirs 
of  Vielleville,  or  the  commentaries  of  Monluc,  or  even 


CONCLUSION.  377 

the  vast  unnamed,  or  misnamed,  compilation  of  Bran- 
tome.  Yet  the  Kenaissance  did,  on  the  whole,  dominate 
France,  though  it  could  not  eliminate,  or  suppress,  what 
was  essentially  French.  Its  intense  interest  in  the  life 
and  the  character  of  man  was  never  better  shown  than 
by  Montaigne.  In  poetry  the  attempt  to  adapt  the 
classic  and  Italian  models  to  French  use  swept  all 
before  it.  Nowhere  was  the  French  disposition  to  find 
its  freedom  in  the  service  of  a  classic  model  more 
clearly  seen  than  in  the  drama  of  the  Pleiade.  It  is  true 
that  Jodelle,  Gamier,  Belleau,  Grevin,  and  the  others 
may  be  said  to  have  failed.  They  did  not  produce 
any  dramatic  literature  which  has  much  more  than  an 
interest  of  curiosity.  Yet  the  later  history  of  the 
French  stage  proves  that  they  were  making  their 
efforts  on  lines  congenial  to  their  nation.  The 
dramatists  of  the  Augustan  age  did  no  more  than 
work  in  the  same  spirit,  and  to  the  same  ends  as  their 
forgotten  predecessors,  with  altered — and  but  slightly 
altered — means. 

A  comparison  between  the  three  literatures  will  go 
far  to  explain  their  respective  fates.  For  the  Spanish 
there  could  not  well  be  any  future.  A  strong  national 
character,  unchanging,  and  so  close  in  the  fibre  that 
it  never  really  admits  a  foreign  influence,  could  not 
well  do  more  than  express  itself  once.  The  time  came 
when  it  had  said  its  say — and  nothing  then  remained 
except,  first  mere  juggling  with  words,  and  then  silence 
— Gongorism  and  Decadence.  In  England  and  in 
France  there  was  the  hope,  and  even  the  assurance, 
of  far  more  to  come.     Though  the  Spanish  story  has 


378      EUROPEAN   LITERATURE — LATER   RENAISSANCE. 

been  carried  beyond  the  dates  allowed  for  France  and 
England,  there  is  no  unfairness  in  this  sentence.  In 
1616  Lope  had  still  much  of  his  best  work  to  do. 
Quevedo,  Calderon,  and  Gongora  were  to  come;  but  the 
first  and  second  brought  nothing,  or  at  least  very  little, 
absolutely  new,  and  the  third  brought  destruction. 
Lope  was  only  to  do  what  he  had  done  already.  When 
Shakespeare  died  in  England  and  Mathurin  Eegnier 
in  France,  a  long  succession  was  to  follow  them. 
Englishmen  and  Frenchmen  had  learnt  their  lesson 
from  the  Eenaissance,  and  were  to  use  their  know- 
ledge. 


INDEX. 


Aeuiia,  Ferdinand  de,  43. 
Alarcon,    Juan    Ruiz    de,   83,   93, 

]  02-105. 
Aleman,  Mateo,  7,  137,  141. 
Amadis  of  Gaul,  127  sq. 
Antonio,  Biblioteca  Hispana,  3. 
Argensola,  Bartolome  de,  48,  170. 
Argensola,  Lupercio  de,  48. 
Arte  of  English  Poesie,  Tlie,  188. 
Aubertin,  Mr,  57  note,  58  note. 
Aubigne,    Theodore    Agrippa    D', 
,  306-308,  332  sq. 
Avila,  Juan  de,  180. 
Avila,  Luis  de,  158. 

Baif,  Jean  Antoine  de,  293,  301. 

Barons'  War,  The,  210. 

Bartas,  Du,  303-306. 

Bellay,  Joachim  du,   24,   293  sq., 

298-300. 
Belleau,  Remi,  293,  300. 
Bertaut,  Jean,  299. 
Biblioteca  de  Aribau  or  de  Riba- 

deneyra,  40  note. 
Bodin,  Jean,  329. 
Borrow,  George,  26. 
Boscan,  Juan,  10,  30  sq.,  41. 
Brant ome,  Pierre  de,  336. 
Breton,  272. 

Bruno,  Giordano,  360-365. 
Burtou,  Sir  Richard,  58  note. 

Calderon,  80,  83-90,  93,  94,  111-120. 
Caminha,  Pedro  de  Andrade,  55. 


Camoens,  Luiz  da,  57-59. 
Campion,  Thomas,  189. 
Cancioneros,  the,  10  sq. 
Cano,  Dominican  Melchior,  46. 
Carloix,  Vincent,  330. 
Carvajal,  Micael  de,  65. 
Casas,  Bartolome  de  las,  162. 
Castellanos,  Juan  de,  53. 
Castillejo,  Cristobal  de,  10,  25,  35. 
Castillo,  Hernan  del,  11,  15. 
Castro,  Guillen  de,  82. 
Celestina,  6,  64,  138,  139. 
Cervantes,  5,  61,  120  sq.,  145-156. 
Cetina,  Gutierre  de,  32,  43. 
Chaide,  Malon  de,  179. 
Charron,  Pierre,  350. 
Coloma,  Carlos,  Marquis  of  Espinar, 

159. 
Cruz,  Juan  de  la,  179,  183. 
Cueva,  Juan  de  la,  37  sq.,  71,  92. 

Daniel,  Samuel,  213-215. 
Daurat,  Jean,  292,  301. 
Dekker,  276. 

Didlogo  de  la  Lengua,  23. 
Diaz,  Bemal,  160. 
Drayton,  210,  216-219. 

Encina,  Juan  del,  8,  10,  64  sq. 
Ercilla,  Alonso  de,  54  sq. 
Espinel,  Vicente,  143. 
Estella,  Diego  de,  177. 

Fanshawe,  Sir  Richard,  58  note. 


380 


INDEX. 


Farsa  del   Sacramento   de    Peral- 

forja,  63. 
Ferreira,  Antonio,  55,  66. 
Figueroa,  Francisco  de,  48. 
Figueroa,  Snarez  de,  174. 
Figueroa,  Vera  y,  174. 
Fitz-Geoffrey,  Charles,  211. 
Fontaine,  27. 

Garcilaso,  10,  31,  41  sq. 
Gamier,  Robert,  317-320. 
Gascoigne,  George,  191. 
Gomara,  Francisco  Lopez  de,  161. 
Gomez,  Enriquez,  138. 
Gongora  and  Gongorism,  34,  48  sq. 
Googe,  Barnabe,  191. 
Gorboduc,  232. 
Gosson,  Stephen,  201. 
Gracian,  Baltasar,  172. 
Granada,  Luis  de,  176,  181. 
Grant-Duff,  Sir  M.  E.,  172. 
Greene,  Robert,  238-240,  272. 
Grevin,  Jacques,  316. 
Guarini,  Giambattista,  365. 
Guevara,  Antonio  de,  26  sq. 
Guevara,  Luis  Velez  de,  156  note. 

Hall,  Joseph,  219  sq. 
Hallam,  286. 
Harvey,  Gabriel,  186. 
Herrera,  Antonio  de,  1(33. 
Herrera,  Hernan  de,  10,  41,  42,  45, 

47. 
History  of  the  Civil  War,  210. 
Hita,  Gines  Perez  de,  136. 
Hooker,  Richard,  286-289. 

Inca  Garcilaso,  the,  163. 

Jerez,  Francisco  de,  161. 
Jodelle,  Estienne,  312-316. 
John  II.,  7. 
Johnson,  Dr,  46. 

Kyd,  Thomas,  242. 

Larivey,  Pierre,  321-324. 
Lazarillo  de  Tormgs,  7,  140. 
Ledesma,  Alonso  de,  51. 
Leon,  Luis  de,  34,  45  sq.,  181. 
Leon,  Pedro  Cieza  de,  161. 
Lewes,  G.  H.,  86  note. 
Libros  de  Caballerias,  125  sq. 
Lockhart,  J.  G.,  18  sq. 


Lodge,  219,  235,  272. 
Longfellow,  H.  W.,  9. 
Lyly,  John,  235,  266  sq. 

Manrique,  Jorge,  42. 

Mardones,  Cristobal  de  Salazar,  49 

sq. 
Mariana,  Juan  de,  167-169. 
Markham,  Gervase,  211. 
Marlowe,  Christopher,  242-245. 
Marprelate,   Martin,   263  sq.,  276- 

285. 
Marston,  219  sq. 

Melo,  Francisco  Manuel  de,  166. 
Mena,  Juan  de,  7  sq.,  35. 
Mendoza,  Bernardino  de,  159. 
Mendoza,  Diego  de,  32,  43  sq. ,  140, 

164. 
Menendez,  Don  M.,  40,  61,  86  note. 
Molina,  Tirso  de,  29,  81,  105-110, 

125. 
Molinos,  Miguel  de,  176. 
Moncada,  Francisco  de,  165. 
Monluc,  Blaise  de,  334. 
Montaigne,  Michel  de,  344-350. 
Montalvo,  Garcia  Ordonez  de,  128. 
Montchrestien,  Antoine  de,  320. 
Montemayor,  Jorge  de,  124. 
Morales,  Ambrosio  de,  166. 
Morel-Fatio,  M.  Alfred,  43  note. 
Moreto,  90. 
Morley,  Mr  John,  173. 

Naharro,  Bartolome  de  Torres,  67. 
Nash,  Thomas,  235,  273-276. 
Nebrissensis,  22. 
Noue,  Francois  de  la,  331. 

Ocampo,  Florian  de,  166. 
Oliva,  Fernan  Perez  de,  22. 
Ortega,  Fray  Juan  de,  140. 
Oviedo,  Gonzalo  Fernandez  de,  161. 

"  Palmerines,"  the,  130  sq. 
Pedroso,  Eduardo  Gonzalez,  62  note. 
Peele,  George,  240-242. 
Perez,  Andreas,  143. 
Pleiade,  the,  291,  310  sq. 
Puttenham,  George,  188,  262. 

Quevedo,  51,  144  sq. 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  264  sq. 
Regnier,  Mathurin,  308. 


INDEX. 


381 


Rengifo,  Juan  Diaz,  36. 
Ribadeneyra,  Pedro  de,  169. 
Ronwnceros,  the,  14  sq. 
Ronsard,  Pierre  de,  34,  292,  295- 

298. 
RoxavS,  Agustin  de,  175. 
Roxas,  Francisco  de,  90. 
Rneda,  Lope  de,  68  sq. 

Sa  de  Miranda,  Francisco  de,  55. 
Saavedra-Fajardo,  Diego    de,    170, 

173. 
Sackville,  Sir  Thomas,  189,  232. 
Sanchez,  Francisco,  42. 
Sandoval,  Prudencio  de,  170. 
Santillana,  Marquis  of,  8,  25,  35. 
Satyre  Menippee,  the,  339-344. 
Schlegel,  A.  W.,  122. 
Sempere,  Hieronimo,  52. 
Shakespeare,  247-258. 
Sidney,   Sir    Philip,    37,    200-204, 

269-272. 
Silva,  Feliciano  de,  131. 
Solis,  Antonio  de,  170. 
Sommelsdyck,  Aarsens  van,  6. 
Song-books,  Elizabethan,  208. 
Sonneteers,  Elizabethan,  206. 
Southey,  Robert,  55  sq. 
Spenser,  Edmund,  185,  192-199. 
Still,  John,  231. 
Sully,  327. 


Taille,  Jacques  de  la,  317. 
Tasso,  Torquato,  353-360. 
Teresa,  Santa,  177-182. 
Thyard,  Pontus  de,  301. 
Ticknor,  Mr,  28,  30,  40,  64  note, 

87. 
Timoneda,  Juan  de,  63,  70,  125. 
Tirant  lo  Blanch,  126. 
Turberville,  George,  190  sq. 

Udall,  Nicholas,  230. 

Vaca,    Alvar    Nunez    Cabeza    de, 

160. 
Vair,  Guillaume  du,  351. 
Valdes,  Juan  de,  23. 
Valera,  Don  Juan,  4. 
Valois,  Marguerite  de,  337. 
Vega,  Lope  de,  28,  48,  t>3,  61,  64, 

72-80,  92,  94-102. 
Vicente,  Gil,  62. 
Villalobos,  Francisco  de,  22. 
Virues,  Cristobal  de,  71. 

Warner,  William,  211-213. 
Watson,  Thomas,  204-206. 
Webbe,  187,  190,  262. 

Zapata,  Luis  de,  52. 
Zarate,  Augustin  de,  161. 
Zurita,  Geronimo  de,  167. 


I>nlNTKD   BV   WILLIAM   BLACKWOOD   AND  SONS. 


M*&?4m,, 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below, 
or  on  the  date  to  which  renewed.  Renewals  only: 

Tel.  No.  642-3405 
Renewals  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  date  due. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


Sect  to  recall                                                       : 

BEC'DLD    JAN  ft    •W-spMA 

0 

APR  1 1 19/6         I 

keg.  cm.  m  i% 

REC.CIK 

tfjxcianjniijQ 

LD21A-40m-8,'72 
(Qll73SlO)476-A-32 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


